JLEI  T 


ONE  OF  THE  CAMEL  CORPS  OF  EGYPT 


The  Rulers 

of 

The  Mediterranean 


BY 

RICHARD   HARDING   DAVIS 

AUTHOR   OP 

"THE  WEST  FROM  A  CAR-WINDOW"  "GALLEGHER* 
"VAN  BIBBER  AND  OTHERS"  ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW  YORK 

HARPER    &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 
1894 


Copyright,  1893,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 

AU  rights  reserved. 


TO 


HON.  EDWARD  C.  LITTLE 

EX-DIPLOMATIC-AGENT  AND  CONSUL-GENERAL 

or 
THE  UNITED  STATES  TO  EGYPT 


CONTENTS 


CHAP.  PACE 

I  THE   ROCK  OF  GIBRALTAR I 

II  TANGIER 37 

III  FROM  GIBRALTAR  TO  CAIRO 72 

IV  CAIRO   AS   A   SHOW-PLACE IO2 

V  THE   ENGLISHMEN   IN   EGYPT 1 39 

VI  MODERN   ATHENS 178 

VII  CONSTANTINOPLE 198 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

ONE  OF  THE  CAMEL  CORPS  OF  EGYPT    ....    Frontispiece 

THE  MAN   FROM   DETROIT 5 

THE  ROCK  FROM  THE  BAY 9 

TYPES 13 

GIBRALTAR  AS  SEEN  ACROSS  THE  NEUTRAL  GROUND     .      .  1$ 

AN   ENGLISH   SENTRY 19 

A  SPANISH   SENTRY 21 

SIGNAL  STATION  ON  THE  TOP  OF  THE  ROCK        ....  25 

CANNONS  MASKED   BY  BUSHES 29 

TEA  IN  THE  OFFICERS*  QUARTERS 33 

BREAD  MERCHANTS  AT  THE  GATE 41 

SANITARY  OUTFIT   DUMPING   REFUSE  OVER  THE  WALL       .  47 

A  WOMAN   OF  TANGIER 53 

WATER-VENDER  AT  THE  DOOR  OF  A  PRIVATE  HOUSE  .      .  57 

A  STREET  DANCER        63 

IN  THE  PRISON 67 

MALTESE   PEDDLERS 75 

STREET  OF  SANTA  LUCIA,  MALTA 79 

BRINDISI 85 

PILLAR  OF  C.CSAR   AT  BRINDISI 89 

APPROACH  TO   ISMAlLIA   BY  THE  SUEZ  CANAL       ....  93 

STEAM-DREDGE  AT  WORK   IN  THE  SUEZ  CANAL   ....  97 

BAZAR  OF  A  WORKER  IN  BRASS IO$ 

GROUP  OP  NATIVES  IN   FRONT  OF  SHEPHEARD*S   HOTEL     .  log 


X  ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

A  BRITISH   SQUARE  FORMED   IN   FRONT   OF   THK   1'YKAMIDS    117 

SHADOW   OF  THE   PYRAMID   OF  CHEOPS 123 

A   SECTION   OF  THE   PYRAMID I2Q 

DAHABEEYAHS   ON   THE  NILE  BEFORE  CAIRO 135 

EGYPTIAN  INFANTRY   IN   THEIR   DIFFERENT   UNIFORMS        .    141 

RIAZ   PASHA,  PRIME-MINISTER  OF  EGYPT 145 

AN   EGYPTIAN  LANCER 149 

TIGRANE   PASHA,  MINISTER   OF   FOREIGN  AFFAIRS       .      .      .    153 

A  CAMEL  CORPS   PATROL  AT  WADI   HALFA 157 

H.   H.  ABBAS   II.,  KHEDIVE  OF  EGYPT l6l 

THE  GUN  MULE  OF  THE  MULE  BATTERY 165 

LORD  CROMER,  THE  ENGLISH  DIPLOMATIC  AGENT  IN  EGYPT    169 

A  GUN  OF  THE  MULE  BATTERY   IN   ACTION 173 

GREEK  SOLDIER  IN  THE  NATIONAL  (ALBANIAN)  UNIFORM    .    179 

GREEK   PEASANT  GIRL l8l 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  ATHENS 183 

ALBANIAN   PEASANT   WOMAN l86 

ALBANIAN   PEASANT  WOMAN 187 

GREEK   PEASANT l88 

ALBANIAN   PEASANT   IN   THE  STREETS   OF  ATHENS      .      .      .    189 

POLYTECHNIC   SCHOOL l()l 

AN   OLD   ATHENIAN   OF  THE  PRESENT  DAY        194 

A  GREEK   SHEPHERD      195 

GENERAL  VIEW   OF  CONSTANTINOPLE 2OI 

ONE  OF  THE  SULTAN'S   PALACES   ON   THE   BOSPORUS       .      .    2O5 

A  FIRE  COMPANY   OF  CONSTANTINOPLE 2Og 

STREET   DOGS   OF   CONSTANTINOPLE 21$ 

GUARD    OF    CAVALRY     PRECEDING     THE    SULTAN    TO    THE 

MOSQUE 219 

EXTERIOR   OF  THE  MOSQUE   OF   ST.  SOPHIA 22$ 


THEKULERS  OF  THE 
MEDITERRANEAN    I 


THE   ROCK  OF  GIBRALTAR 

F  you  have  always  crossed  the  At- 
lantic in  the  spring-time  or  in 
the  summer  months,  as  do 
most  tourists,  you  will  find 
that  leaving  New  York  in  the 
winter  is  more  like  a  relief 
expedition  to  the  north  pole 
than  the  setting  forth  on  a 
pleasure  tour  to  the  summer 
shores  of  the  Mediterranean. 

There  is  no  green  grass  on 
the  hills  of  Staten  Island,  but 
there  is,  instead,  a  long  field  of  ice  stretching  far 
up  the  Hudson  River,  and  a  wind  that  cuts  into 
the  face,  and  dashes  the  spray  up  over  the  tug- 
boats in  frozen  layers,  leaving  it  there  like  the 
icing  on  a  cake.  The  Atlantic  Highlands  are 
black  with  bare  branches  and  white  with  snow, 
and  you  observe  for  the  first  time  that  men 
who  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships  know  nothing 
I 


2       THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

of  open  fireplaces.  An  icy  wind  keeps  the  deck 
as  clear  as  a  master-at-arms  could  do  it ;  and  sud- 
den storms  of  snow,  which  you  had  always  before 
associated  with  streets  or  fields,  and  not  at  all 
with  the  decks  of  ships,  burst  over  the  side,  and 
leave  the  wood-work  wet  and  slippery,  and  cold 
to  the  touch. 

And  then  on  the  third  or  fourth  day  out  the 
sea  grows  calm,  and  your  overcoat  seems  to  have 
taken  on  an  extra  lining;  and  strange  people,  who 
apparently  have  come  on  board  during  the  night, 
venture  out  on  the  sunlit  deck  and  inquire  for 
steamer  chairs  and  mislaid  rugs. 

These  smaller  vessels  which  run  from  New 
York  to  Genoa  are  as  different  from  the  big 
North  Atlantic  boats,  with  their  twin  screws 
and  five  hundred  cabin  passengers,  as  a  fam- 
ily boarding-house  is  from  a  Broadway  hotel. 
This  is  so  chiefly  because  you  are  sailing  under 
a  German  instead  of  an  English  flag.  There 
is  no  one  so  important  as  an  English  captain — 
he  is  like  a  bishop  in  gold  lace;  but  a  German 
captain  considers  his  passengers  as  one  large 
happy  family,  and  treats  them  as  such,  whether 
they  like  their  new  relatives  or  not.  The  dis- 
cipline on  board  the  Fulda  was  like  that  of  a 
ship  of  war,  where  the  officers  and  crew  were 
concerned,  but  the  passengers  might  have  be- 
lieved they  were  on  their  own  private  yacht. 

There  was  music  for  breakfast,  dinner,  and  tea; 
music  when  the  fingers  of  the  trombonist  were 
frozen  and  when  the  snow  fell  upon  the  taut  sur- 


THE   ROCK   OF   GIBRALTAR  3 

face  of  the  big  drum  ;  and  music  at  dawn  to  tell 
us  it  was  Sunday,  so  that  you  awoke  imagining 
yourself  at  church.  There  was  also  a  ball,  and 
the  captain  led  an  opening  march,  and  the  stew- 
ards stood  at  every  point  to  see  that  the  passen- 
gers kept  in  line,  and  "  rounded  up  "  those  who 
tried  to  slip  away  from  the  procession.  There 
were  speeches,  too,  at  all  times,  and  lectures  and 
religious  services,  and  on  the  last  night  out  a 
grand  triumph  of  the  c/it'f,  who  built  wonderful 
candy  goddesses  of  Liberty  smiling  upon  the 
other  symbolic  lady  who  keeps  watch  on  the 
Rhine,  and  the  band  played  "  Dixie,"  which  it 
had  been  told  was  the  national  anthem,  and  the 
portrait  of  the  German  Emperor  smiled  down 
upon  us  over  his  autograph.  All  this  was  inter- 
esting, because  it  was  characteristic  of  the  Ger- 
mans; it  showed  their  childish  delight  in  little 
things,  and  the  same  simplicity  of  character 
which  makes  the  German  soldiers  who  would  not 
move  out  of  the  way  of  the  French  bullets  dance 
around  a  Christmas-tree.  The  American  or  the 
Englishman  will  not  do  these  things,  because  he 
has  too  keen  a  sense  of  the  ridiculous,  and  is 
afraid  of  being  laughed  at.  So  when  he  goes  to 
sea  he  plays  poker  and  holds  auctions  on  the 
run. 

There  was  only  one  passenger  on  board  \vho 
objected  to  the  music.  He  was  from  Detroit, 
and  for  the  first  three  days  remained  lashed  to 
his  steamer  chair  like  a  mummy,  with  nothing 
showing  but  a  blue  nose  and  closed  eyelids.  The 


4      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

band  played  at  his  end  of  the  deck,  and  owing  to 
the  fingers  of  the  players  being  frozen,  and  to 
the  sudden  lurches  of  the  ship,  the  harmony  was 
sometimes  destroyed.  Those  who  had  an  ear  for 
music  picked  up  their  steamer  chairs  and  moved 
to  windward  ;  but  this  young  man,  being  half 
dead  and  firmly  lashed  to  his  place,  was  unable 
to  save  himself. 

On  the  morning  of  the  fourth  day,  when  the 
concert  was  over  and  the  band  had  gone  to  thaw 
out,  the  young  man  suddenly  sat  upright  and 
pointed  his  forefinger  at  the  startled  passengers. 
We  had  generally  decided  that  he  was  dead. 
"  The  Lord  knows  I'm  a  sick  man,"  he  said,  blink- 
ing his  eyes  feebly;  "  but  if  I  live  till  midnight 
I'll  find  out  where  they  hide  those  horns,  and  I'll 
drop  'em  into  the  Gulf  Stream,  if  it  takes  my  dy- 
ing breath."  He  then  fell  over  backwards,  and 
did  not  speak  again  until  we  reached  Gibraltar. 

There  is  something  about  the  sight  of  land  af- 
ter one  has  been  a  week  without  it  which  sup- 
plies a  want  that  nothing  else  can  fill  ;  and  it  is 
interesting  to  note  how  careless  one  is  as  to  its 
name,  or  whether  it  is  pink  or  pale  blue  on  the 
maps,  or  whether  it  is  ruled  by  a  king  or  a  colo- 
nial secretary.  It  is  quite  sufficient  that  it  is  land. 
This  was  impressed  upon  me  once,  on  entering 
New  York  Harbor,  by  a  young  man  who  emerged 
from  his  deck  cabin  to  discover,  what  all  the  other 
passengers  already  knew,  that  we  were  in  the  up- 
per bay.  He  gave  a  shout  of  ecstatic  relief  and 
pleasure.  "  That,"  he  cried,  pointing  to  the  west, 


THE    ROCK    OF    GIBRALTAR  5 

"  is  Staten  Island,  but  that,"  pointing  to  the  right, 
"is  LAM>. 

The  first  land  you  see  on  going  to  Gibraltar 
is  the  Azores  Islands.  They  are  volcanic  and 
mountainous,  and  accompany  the  boat  for  a  day 
and  a  half;  but  they  could  be  improved  if  they 
were  moved  farther  south  about  two  hundred 


THK  MAN  FROM   DETROIT 


miles,  as  one  has  to  get  up  at  dawn  to  see  the 
best  of  them.  It  is  quite  warm  by  this  time,  and 
the  clothes  you  wore  in  New  York  seem  to  be- 
long to  a  barbarous  period  and  past  fashion,  and 
have  become  heavy  and  cumbersome,  and  take  up 
an  unnecessary  amount  of  room  in  your  trunk. 
And  then  people  tell  you  that  there  is  land  in 


6      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

sight  again,  and  you  find  how  really  far  you  are 
from  home  when  you  learn  that  it  is  Portugal, 
and  so  a  part  of  Europe,  and  not  an  island 
thrown  up  by  a  volcano,  or  stolen  or  strayed  from 
its  moorings  at  the  mainland.  Portugal  is  ap- 
parently a  high  red  hill,  with  around  white  tower 
on  the  top  of  it  flying  signal  flags.  Its  chief  in- 
dustry is  the  arranging  of  these  flags  by  a  man. 
It  is,  on  the  whole,  a  disappointing  country. 
After  this,  everybody  begins  to  pack  and  to  ex- 
change visiting-cards ;  and  those  who  are  to  get 
off  at  Gibraltar  are  pursued  by  stewards  and  band- 
masters and  young  men  with  testimonials  that 
they  want  signed,  and  by  the  weak  in  spirit,  who, 
at  the  eleventh  hour,  think  they  will  not  go  on 
to  Genoa,  but  will  get  off  here  and  go  on  to  Tan- 
gier, and  who  want  you  to  decide  for  them.  And 
which  do  you  think  would  pay  best,  and  what  is 
there  to  see  in  Tangier,  anyway?  And  as  that 
is  exactly  what  you  are  going  to  find  out,  you 
cannot  tell. 

When  I  left  the  deck  the  last  night  out  the 
stars  were  all  over  the  heavens ;  and  the  foremast, 
as  it  swept  slowly  from  side  to  side,  looked  like 
a  black  pendulum  upside  down  marking  out  the 
sky  and  portioning  off  the  stars.  And  when  I 
woke  there  was  a  great  creaking  of  chains,  and  I 
could  see  out  of  my  port-hole  hundreds  of  fixed 
lights  and  rows  and  double  rows  of  lamps,  so  that 
you  might  have  thought  the  ship  during  the 
night  had  run  aground  in  the  heart  of  a  city. 

The  first  sight  of  Gibraltar   is,  I   think,  dis- 


THE   ROCK   OF  GIBRALTAR  7 

appointing.  It  means  so  much,  and  so  many 
lives  have  been  given  for  it,  and  so  many  ships 
have  been  sunk  by  its  batteries,  and  such  great 
powers  have  warred  for  twelve  hundred  years 
for  its  few  miles  of  stone,  that  its  black  outline 
against  the  sky,  with  nothing  to  measure  it  with 
but  the  fading  stars,  is  dwarfed  and  spoiled.  It 
is  only  after  the  sun  begins  to  turn  the  lights 
out,  and  you  are  able  to  compare  it  with  the 
great  ships  at  its  base,  and  you  see  the  battle- 
ments and  the  mouths  of  cannon,  and  the  clouds 
resting  on  its  top,  that  you  understand  it ;  and 
then  when  the  outline  of  the  crouching  lion,  that 
faces  all  Europe,  comes  into  relief,  you  remember 
it  is,  as  they  say,  the  lock  to  the  Mediterranean, 
of  which  England  holds  the  key.  And  even  while 
you  feel  this,  and  are  greedily  following  the  course 
of  each  rampart  and  terrace  with  eyes  that  are 
tired  of  blank  stretches  of  water,  some  one  points 
to  a  low  line  of  mountains  lying  like  blue  clouds 
before  the  red  sky  of  the  sunrise,  dim,  forbid- 
ding, and  mysterious — and  you  know  that  it  is 
Africa. 

Spain,  lying  to  the  right,  all  green  and  ame- 
thyst, and  flippant  and  gay  with  white  houses  and 
red  roofs,  and  Gibraltar's  grim  show  of  battle- 
ments and  war,  become  somehow  of  little  mo- 
ment. You  feel  that  you  have  known  them  al- 
ways, and  that  they  are  as  you  fancied  they 
would  be.  But  this  other  land  across  the  water 
looks  as  inscrutable,  as  dark,  and  as  silent  as  the 
Sphinx  that  typifies  it,  and  you  feel  that  its  Pil- 


8      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

lar  of  Hercules  still  marks  the  entrance  to  the 
"  unknown  world." 

Nine  out  of  every  ten  of  those  who  visit  Gibral- 
tar for  the  first  time  expect  to  find  an  island.  It 
ought  to  be,  and  it  would  be  one  but  for  a  strip 
of  level  turf  half  a  mile  wide  and  half  a  mile  long 
which  joins  it  to  the  sunny  green  hills  of  Spain. 
But  for  this  bit  of  land,  which  they  call  "  the  Neu- 
tral Ground,"  Gibraltar  would  be  an  island,  for  it 
has  the  Mediterranean  to  the  east,  a  bay,  and  be- 
yond that  the  hills  of  Spain  to  the  west,  and  Af- 
rica dimly  showing  fourteen  miles  across  the  sea 
to  the  south. 

Gibraltar  has  been  besieged  thirteen  times  ;  by 
Moors  and  by  Spaniards,  and  again  by  Moors, 
and  again  by  Spaniards  against  Spaniards.  It 
was  during  one  of  these  wars  between  two  fac- 
tions in  Spain,  in  1704,  that  the  English,  who 
were  helping  one  of  the  factions,  took  the  Rock, 
and  were  so  well  pleased  with  it  that  they  settled 
there,  and  have  remained  there  ever  since.  If 
possession  is  nine  points  of  the  law,  there  was 
never  a  place  in  the  history  of  the  world  held 
with  nine  as  obvious  points.  There  were  three 
more  sieges  after  the  English  took  Gibraltar,  one 
of  them,  the  last,  continuing  for  four  years.  The 
English  were  fighting  America  at  the  time,  and 
rowing  in  the  Nile,  and  so  did  not  do  much  tow- 
ards helping  General  George  Elliot,  who  was 
Governor  of  the  Rock  at  that  time.  It  would 
appear  to  be,  as  well  as  one  can  judge  from  this 
distance,  a  case  of  neglect  on  the  part  of  the 


THE   ROCK   OF   GIBRALTAR  II 

mother-country  for  her  little  colony  and  her  six 
thousand  men,  very  much  like  her  forgetfulness 
of  Gordon,  only  Elliot  succeeded  where  Gordon 
failed  (if  you  can  associate  that  word  with  that 
name),  and  so  no  one  blamed  the  home  govern- 
ment for  risking  what  would  have  been  a  more 
serious  loss  than  the  loss  of  Calais,  had  Elliot 
surrendered,  and  "Gib"  gone  back  to  its  rightful 
owners,  that  is,  the  owners  who  have  the  one 
point.  The  history  of  this  siege  is  one  of  the 
most  interesting  of  war  stories ;  it  is  interesting 
whether  you  ever  expect  to  visit  Gibraltar  or  not ; 
it  is  doubly  interesting  when  you  walk  the  pretty 
streets  of  the  Rock  to-day,  with  its  floating  pop- 
ulation of  twenty  thousand,  and  try  to  imagine 
the  place  held  by  six  thousand  half-starved,  sick, 
anjj  wounded  soldiers,  living  at  times  on  grass 
and  herbs  and  handfuls  of  rice,  and  yet  carrying 
on  an  apparently  forlorn  fight  for  four  years 
against  the  entire  army  and  navy  of  Spain,  and, 
at  the  last,  against  the  arms  of  France  as  well. 

We  are  apt  to  consider  the  Gibraltar  of  to-day 
as  occupying  the  same  position  to  the  Mediterra- 
nean as  Queenstown  does  to  the  Atlantic,  a  place 
where  passengers  go  ashore  while  the  mails  are 
being  taken  on  board,  and  not  so  much  for  their 
interest  in  the  place  itself  as  to  again  feel  solid 
earth  under  their  feet.  There  are  passengers 
who  will  tell  you  on  the  way  out  that  you  can 
see  all  there  is  to  be  seen  there  in  three  hours. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  one  can  live  in  Gibraltar  for 
many  weeks  and  see  something  new  every  day. 


12  THE    RULERS   OF    THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

It  struck  me  as  being  more  different  kinds  of  a 
place  than  any  other  spot  of  land  I  had  ever  visit- 
ed, and  one  that  changed  its  aspect  with  every 
shifting  of  the  wind,  and  with  each  rising  and  set- 
ting of  the  sun.  It  is  the  clearing-house  for  three 
most  picturesque  peoples — the  Moors,  in  their 
yellow  slippers  and  bare  legs  and  voluminous 
robes  and  snowy  turbans  ;  the  Spaniards,  with 
romantic  black  capes  and  cloaks  and  red  sashes, 
the  women  with  the  lace  mantilla  and  brilliant 
kerchiefs  and  pretty  faces ;  and,  mixed  with  these, 
the  pride  and  glory  of  the  British  army  and  navy, 
in  all  the  bravery  of  red  coats  and  white  helmets, 
or  blue  jackets,  or  Highland  kilts.  It  is  a  fortress 
as  imposing  as  the  Tower  of  London,  a  winter 
resort  as  pretty  as  St.  Augustine,  and  a  seaport 
town  of  free  entry,  into  which  come  on  every  tide 
people  of  many  nations,  and  ships  flying  every 
flag. 

Around  its  base  are  the  ramparts,  like  a  band 
of  stone  and  steel ;  above  them  the  town,  rising 
like  a  staircase,  with  houses  for  steps — yellow 
houses,  with  light  green  blinds  sticking  out  at 
different  angles,  and  with  sloping  red  roofs  meet- 
ing other  lines  of  red  roofs,  and  broken  by  a  car- 
peting of  green  where  the  parks  and  gardens 
make  an  opening  in  the  yellow  front  of  the  town, 
and  from  which  rise  tall  palms  and  palmettoes, 
and  rows  of  sea-pines,  and  fluttering  union-jacks 
which  mark  the  barracks  of  a  regiment.  Above 
the  town  is  the  Rock,  covered  with  a  green 
growth  of  scrub  and  of  little  trees  below,  and 


THE    ROCK    OF    GIBRALTAR 


A   TYPE 


naked  and  bare  above,  stretching  for  several  miles 

from  north  to  south,  and  rearing  its  great  bulk 

up  into  the  sky  until  it  loses  its 

summit  in  the  clouds.    It  is  never 

twice  the  same.     To-day  it  may 

be  smiling  and  resplendent  under 

a  warm,  brilliant  sun  that  spreads 

out   each    shade    of  green,   and 

shows  each  terrace  and  rampart 

as  clearly  as  though  one  saw  it 

through  a  glass;  the  sky  becomes 

as  blue  as  the  sea  and  the  bay, 

and  the  white  villages  of  Spain 

seem  as  near  to  one  as  the  red 

soldier  smoking  his  pipe  on  the 

mountings  half-way  up  the  Rock. 

And  to-morrow  the  whole  top  of  the  Rock  may 

be  lost  in  a  thick  curtain  of  gray  clouds,  and  the 

waters  of  the  bay  will  be  tossing  and  covered  with 
white -caps,  and  the  lands 
about  disappear  from  sight 
as  though  they  had  sunk  into 
the  sea  during  the  night  and 
had  left  you  alone  on  an 
island.  At  times  a  sunset 
paints  the  Rock  a  martial 
red,  or  the  moonlight  softens 
it,  and  you  see  only  the  tall 
palms  and  the  graceful  bal- 
conies and  the  gardens  of 

plants,  and  each  rampart  becomes  a  terrace  and 

each  casemate  a  balcony.      Or  at  night,  when 


A     IVI'K 


14     THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

the  lamps  are  lit,  you  might  imagine  yourself  on 
the  stage  of  a  theatre,  walking  in  a  scene  set  for 
Fra  Diavolo. 

There  are  no  such  streets  or  houses  outside  of 
stage-land.  It  is  only  in  stage  cities  that  the 
pavements  and  streets  are  so  conspicuously  clean, 
or  that  the  hanging  lamps  of  beaten  iron-work 
throw  such  deep  "shadows,  or  that  there  are  such 
high,  heavily  carved  Moorish  doorways  and  mys- 
terious twisting  stairways  in  the  solid  rock,  or 
shops  with  such  queer  signs,  or  walls  plastered 
with  such  odd-colored  placards  —  streets  where 
every  footfall  echoes,  and  where  dark  figures  sud- 
denly appear  from-  narrow  alleyways  and  cry 
"  Halt,  there  !"  at  you,  and  then  "  All's  well "  as 
you  pass  by. 

Gibraltar  has  one  main  street  running  up  and 
clinging  to  the  side  of  the  hill  from  the  principal 
quay  to  the  most  southern  point  of  the  Rock. 
Houses  reach  up  to  it  from  the  first  level  of  the 
ramparts,  and  continue  on  up  the  hill  from  its 
Other  side.  On  this  street  are  the  bazars  of  the 
Moors,  and  the  English  shops  and  the  Spanish 
cafes,  and  the  cathedral,  and  the  hotels,  and  the 
Governor's  house,  and  every  one  in  Gibraltar  is 
sure  to  appear  on  it  at  least  once  in  the  twenty- 
four  hours.  But  the  color  and  tone  of  the  street 
are  military.  There  are  soldiers  at  every  step — 
soldiers  carrying  the  mail  or  bearing  reports,  or 
soldiers  in  bulk  with  a  band  ahead,  or  soldiers 
going  out  to  guard  the  North  Front,  where  lies 
the  Neutral  Ground,  or  to  target  practice,  or  to 


THE   ROCK   OF   GIBRALTAR  l^ 

play  football ;  soldiers  in  two  or  threes,  with  their 
sticks  under  their  arms,  and  their  caps  very  much 
cocked,  and  pipes  in  their  mouths.  But  these 
make  slow  progress,  for  there  is  always  an  officer 
in  sight — either  a  boy  officer  just  out  from  Eng- 
land riding  to  the  polo  field  near  the  Neutral 
Ground,  or  a  commanding  officer  in  a  black  tunic 
and  a  lot  of  ribbons  across  his  breast,  or  an  of- 
ficer of  the  day  with  his  sash  and  sword  ;  and  each 
of  these  has  to  be  saluted.  This  is  an  interest- 
ing spectacle,  and  one  that  is  always  new.  You 
see  three  soldiers  coming  at  you  with  a  quick 
step,  talking  and  grinning,  alert  and  jaunty,  and 
suddenly  the  upper  part  of  their  three  bodies  be- 
comes rigid,  though  their  legs  continue  as  before, 
apparently  of  their  own  volition,  and  their  hands 
go  up  and  their  pipes  and  grins  disappear,  and 
they  pass  you  with  eyes  set  like  dead  men's  eyes, 
and  palms  facing  you  as  though  they  were  trying 
to  learn  which  way  the  wind  was  blowing.  This 
is  due,  you  discover,  to  the  passing  of  a  stout 
gentleman  in  knickerbockers,  who  switches  his 
rattan  stick  in  the  air  in  reply.  Sometimes  when 
he  salutes  the  soldier  stops  altogether,  and  so  his 
walks  abroad  are  punctuated  at  every  twenty 
yards.  It  takes  an  ordinary  soldier  in  Gibraltar 
one  hour  to  walk  ten  minutes. 

Everybody  walks  in  the  middle  of  the  main 
street  in  Gibraltar,  because  the  sidewalks  are  only 
two  feet  wide,  and  because  all  the  streets  are  as 
clean  as  the  deck  of  a  yacht.  Cabs  of  yellow 
wood  and  diligences  with  jangling  bells  and  red 


l8      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

worsted  harness  gallop  through  this  street  and 
sweep  the  people  up  against  the  wall,  and  long 
lines  of  goats  who  leave  milk  in  a  natural  manner 
at  various  shops  tangle  themselves  up  with  long 
lines  of  little  donkeys  and  longer  lines  of  geese, 
with  which  the  local  police  struggle  valiantly. 
All  of  these  things,  troops  and  goats  and  yellow 
cabs  and  polo  ponies  and  dog-carts,  and  priests 
with  curly- brimmed  hats,  and  baggy -breeched 
Moors,  and  huntsmen  in  pink  coats  and  Tommies 
in  red,  and  sailors  rolling  along  in  blue,  make  the 
main  street  of  Gibraltar  as  full  of  variety  as  a 
mask  ball. 

Of  the  Gibraltar  militant,  the  fortress  and  the 
key  to  the  Mediterranean,  you  can  see  but  the 
little  that  lies  open  to  you  and  to  every  one 
along  the  ramparts.  Of  the  real  defensive  works 
of  the  place  you  are  not  allowed  to  have  even  a 
guess.  The  ramparts  stretch  all  along  the  west- 
ern side  of  the  rock,  presenting  to  the  bay  a  high 
shelving  wall  which  twists  and  changes  its  front 
at  every  hundred  yards,  and  in  such  an  unfriendly 
way  that  whoever  tried  to  scale  its  slippery  sur- 
face at  one  point  would  have  a  hundred  yards  of 
ramparts  on  either  side  of  him,  from  which  two 
sides  gunners  and  infantry  could  observe  his 
efforts  with  comfort  and  safety  to  themselves; 
and  from  which,  when  tired  of  watching  him  slip 
and  scramble,  they  could  and  undoubtedly  would 
blow  him  into  bits.  But  they  would  probably 
save  him  the  trouble  of  coming  so  far  by  doing 
that  before  he  left  his  vessel  in  the  bay.  The 


THE    ROCK   OF   GIBRALTAR 


northern  face  of  the 
Rock  —  that  end 
which  faces  Spain, 
and  which  makes 
the  head  of  the 
crouching  lion  — 
shows  two  long 
rows  of  teeth  cut  in 
its  surface  by  con- 
victs of  long  ago. 
You  are  allowed  to 
walk  through  these 
dungeons,  and  to 
look  down  upon 
the  Neutral  Ground 
and  the  little  Span- 
ish town  at  the  end 
of  its  half-mile  over 
the  butts  of  great 
guns.  And  you  will 
marvel  not  so  much 

at  the  engineering  skill  of  whoever  it  was  who 
planned  this  defence  as  at  the  weariness  and  the 
toil  of  the  criminals  who  gave  up  the  greater  part 
of  their  lives  to  hewing  and  blasting  out  these 
great  galleries  and  gloomy  passages,  through 
which  your  footsteps  echo  like  the  report  of  can- 
non. 

Lower  down,  on  the  outside  of  this  mask  of 
rock,  are  more  ramparts,  built  there  by  man, 
from  which  infantry  could  sweep  the  front  of 
the  enemy  were  they  to  approach  from  the  only 


AN   ENGLISH   SENTRY 


20      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

point  from  which  a  land  attack  is  possible.  The 
other  side  of  the  Rock,  that  which  faces  the 
Mediterranean,  is  unfortified,  except  by  the  big 
guns  on  the  very  summit,  for  no  man  could  scale 
it,  and  no  ball  yet  made  could  shatter  its  front. 
To  further  protect  the  north  from  a  land  attack 
there  is  at  the  base  of  the  Rock  and  below  the 
ramparts  a  great  moat,  bridged  by  an  apparently 
solid  piece  of  masonry.  This  roadway,  which 
leads  to  the  north  gate  of  the  fortress — the  one 
which  is  closed  at  six  each  night  —  is  under- 
mined, and  at  a  word  could  be  blown  into  peb- 
bles, turning  the  moat  into  a  great  lake  of  water, 
and  virtually  changing  the  Rock  of  Gibraltar 
into  an  island.  I  never  crossed  this  roadway 
without  wondering  whether  the  sentry  under- 
neath might  not  be  lighting  his  pipe  near  the 
powder-magazine,  and  I  generally  reached  the 
end  of  it  at  a  gallop. 

There  is  still  another  protection  to  the  North 
Front.  It  is  only  the  protection  which  a  watch- 
dog gives  at  night;  but  a  watch-dog  is  most  im- 
portant. He  gives  you  time  to  sound  your  burg- 
lar-alarm and  to  get  a  pistol  from  under  your  pil- 
low. A  line  of  sentries  pace  the  Neutral  Ground, 
and  have  paced  it  for  nearly  two  hundred  years. 
Their  sentry-boxes  dot  the  half-mile  of  turf,  and 
their  red  coats  move  backward  and  forward  night 
and  day,  and  any  one  who  leaves  the  straight  and 
narrow  road  crossing  the  Neutral  Ground,  and 
who  comes  too  near,  passes  a  dead-line  and  is 
shot.  Facing  them,  a  half-mile  off,  are  the  white 


THE   ROCK   OF   GIBRALTAR 


21 


adobe  sentry-boxes  of  Spain  and  another  row  of 
sentries,  wearing  long  blue  coats  and  queer  little 
shakos,  and  smoking  cigarettes.  And  so  the 
two  great  powers  watch  each  other  unceasingly 
across  the  half-mile  of  turf,  and  say,  "  So  far  shall 
you  go,  and  no  farther;  this  belongs  to  me." 
There  is  nothing  more  significant  than  these  two 
rows  of  sentries ;  you  notice  it  whenever  you 
cross  the  Neutral  Ground  for  a  ride  in  Spain. 
First  you  see  the  English  sentry,  rather  short 
and  very  young,  but  very  clean  and  rigid,  and 
scowling  fiercely  over  the  chin  strap  of  his  big 
white  helmet.  His  shoulder-straps  shine  with 
pipe -clay  and  his  boots  with  blacking,  and  his 
arms  are  burnished  and  oily.  Taken  alone,  he  is 
a  little  atom,  a  molecule ;  but  he  is  complete  in 
himself,  with  his  food  and  lodging  on  his  back,  and 
his  arms  ready  to  his 
hand.  He  is  one  ofa 
great  system  that  ob- 
tains from  India  to 
Nova  Scotia,  and  from 
Bermuda  to  Africa 
and  Australia;  and  he 
shows  that  he  knows 
this  in  the  way  in 
which  he  holds  up  his 
chin  and  kicks  out  his 
legs  as  he  tramps  back 
and  forward  guarding 
the  big  rock  at  his 
back.  And  facing  him,  A  SPANISH  SKMKY 


22      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

half  a  mile  away,  you  will  see  a  tall  handsome  man 
seated  on  a  stone,  with  the  tails  of  his  long  coat 
wrapped  warmly  around  his  legs,  and  with  his 
gun  leaning  against  another  rock  while  he  rolls  a 
cigarette ;  and  then,  with  his  hands  in  his  pock- 
ets, he  gazes  through  the  smoke  at  the  sky  above 
and  the  sea  on  either  side,  and  wonders  when  he 
will  be  paid  his  peseta  a  day  for  fighting  and 
bleeding  for  his  country.  This  helps  to  make 
you  understand  how  six  thousand  half -starved 
Englishmen  held  Gibraltar  for  four  years  against 
the  army  of  Spain. 

This  is  about  all  that  you  can  see  of  Gibraltar 
as  a  fortress.  You  hear,  of  course,  of  much  more, 
and  you  can  guess  at  a  great  deal.  Up  above, 
where  the  Signal  Station  is,  and  where  no  one, 
not  even  an  officer  in  uniform  not  engaged  on  the 
works,  is  allowed  to  go,  are  the  real  fortifications. 
What  looks  like  a  rock  is  a  monster  gun  painted 
gray,  or  a  tree  hides  the  mouth  of  another.  And 
in  this  forbidden  territory  are  great  cannon 
which  are  worked  from  the  lowest  ramparts. 
These  are  the  present  triumphs  of  Gibraltar. 
Before  they  came,  the  clouds  which  shut  out  the 
sight  of  the  Rock  as  well  as  the  rest  of  the  world 
from  its  summit  rendered  the  great  pieces  of  ar- 
tillery there  as  useless  in  bad  weather  as  they  are 
harmless  in  times  of  peace.  The  very  elements 
threatened  to  war  against  the  English,  and  a 
shower  of  rain  or  a  veering  wind  might  have  al- 
tered the  fortunes  of  a  battle.  But  a  clever  man 
named  Watkins  has  invented  a  position -finder, 


THE   ROCK   OF   GIBRALTAR  23 

by  means  of  which  those  on  the  lowest  ramparts, 
well  out  of  the  clouds,  can  aim  the  great  guns  on 
the  summit  at  a  vessel  unseen  by  the  gunners 
lost  in  the  mist  above,  and  by  electricity  fire  a 
shot  from  a  gun  a  half-mile  above  them  so  that 
it  will  strike  an  object  many  miles  off  at  sea.  It 
will  be  a  very  strange  sensation  to  the  captain  of 
such  a  vessel  when  he  finds  her  bombarded  by 
shells  that  belch  forth  from  a  drifting  cloud. 

No  stranger  has  really  any  idea  of  the  real 
strength  of  this  fortress,  or  in  what  part  of  it  its 
real  strength  lies.  Not  one  out  of  ten  of  its 
officers  knows  it.  Gibraltar  is  a  grand  and  grim 
practical  joke;  it  is  an  armed  foe  like  the  army 
in  Macbeth,  who  came  in  the  semblance  of  a 
wood,  or  like  the  wooden  horse  of  Troy  that 
held  the  pick  of  the  enemy's  fighting -men. 
What  looks  like  a  solid  face  of  rock  is  a  hanging 
curtain  that  masks  a  battery ;  the  blue  waters 
of  the  bay  are  treacherous  with  torpedoes ;  and 
every  little  smiling  village  of  Spain  has  been 
marked  down  for  destruction,  and  has  had  its 
measurements  taken  as  accurately  as  though  the 
English  batteries  had  been  playing  on  it  already 
for  many  years.  The  Rock  is  undermined  and 
tunnelled  throughout,  and  food  and  provisions 
are  stored  away  in  it  to  last  a  siege  of  seven 
years.  Telephones  and  telegraphs,  signal  sta- 
tions for  flagging,  search-lights,  and  other  such 
devilish  inventions,  have  been  planted  on  every 
point,  and  only  the  Governor  himself  knows  what 
other  modern  improvements  have  been  intro- 


24      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

duced  into  the  bowels  of  this  mountain  or  dis- 
tributed behind  bits  of  landscape  gardening  on 
its  surface. 

On  the  25th  of  February,  at  half-past  ten  in 
the  morning,  three  guns  were  fired  in  rapid  suc- 
cession from  the  top  of  the  Rock,  and  the  win- 
dows shook.  Three  guns  mean  that  Gibraltar  is 
about  to  be  attacked  by  a  fleet  of  war-ships,  and 
that  "  England  expects  every  man  to  do  his 
duty."  So  I  went  out  to  see  him  do  it.  Men 
were  running  through  the  streets  trailing  their 
guns,  and  officers  were  galloping  about  pulling  at 
their  gloves,  and  bodies  of  troops  were  swinging 
along  at  a  double-quick,  which  always  makes 
them  look  as  though  they  were  walking  in  tight 
boots,  and  bugles  were  calling,  and  groups  of 
men,  black  and  clearly  cut  against  the  sky,  were 
excitedly  switching  the  air  with  flags  from  ev- 
ery jutting  rock  and  every  rampart  of  the  garri- 
son. 

Behind  the  ramparts,  quite  out  of  sight  of  the 
vessels  in  the  bay,  were  many  hundreds  of  in- 
fantrymen with  rifles  in  hand,  and  only  waiting 
for  a  signal  to  appear  above  the  coping  of  the 
wall  to  empty  their  guns  into  the  boats  of  the 
enemy.  The  enlisted  men,  who  enjoy  this  sort 
of  play,  were  pleased  and  interested  ;  the  officers 
were  almost  as  calm  as  they  would  be  before  a 
real  enemy,  and  very  much  bored  at  being  called 
out  and  experimented  with.  The  real  object  of 
the  preparation  for  defence  that  morning  was  to 
learn  whether  the  officers  at  different  points  could 


THE   ROCK   OF   GIBRALTAR  27 

communicate  with  the  Governor  as  he  rode  rap- 
idly from  one  spot  to  another.  This  was  done 
by  means  of  flags,  and  although  the  officer  who 
did  the  flagging  for  the  Governor's  party  had 
about  as  much  as  he  could  do  to  keep  his  horse 
on  four  legs,  the  experiment  was  most  successful. 
It  was  a  very  pretty  and  curious  sight  to  see 
men  talking  a  mile  away  to  a  party  of  horsemen 
going  at  full  gallop. 

The  life  of  a  subaltern  of  the  British  army, 
who  belongs  to  a  smart  regiment,  and  who  is 
stationed  at  such  a  post  as  Gibraltar,  impresses 
you  as  being  as  easy  and  satisfactory  a  state 
of  existence  as  a  young  and  unmarried  man  could 
ask.  He  has  always  the  hope  that  some  day — 
any  day,  in  fact  —  he  will  have  a  chance  to  see 
active  service,  and  so  serve  his  country  and  dis- 
tinguish his  name.  And  while  waiting  for  this 
chance  he  enjoys  the  good  things  the  world 
brings  him  with  a  clear  conscience.  He  has 
duties,  it  is  true,  but  they  did  not  strike  me  as 
being  wearing  ones,  or  as  threatening  nervous 
prostration.  As  far  as  I  could  see,  his  most  try- 
ing duty  was  the  number  of  times  a  day  he  had 
to  change  his  clothes,  and  this  had  its  ameliorat- 
ing circumstance  in  that  he  each  time  changed 
into  a  more  gorgeous  costume.  There  was  one 
youth  whom  I  saw  in  four  different  suits  in  two 
hours.  When  I  first  noticed  him  he  was  coming 
back  from  polo,  in  boots  and  breeches ;  then  he 
was  directing  the  firing  of  a  gun,  with  a  pill-box 
hat  on  the  side  of  his  head,  a  large  pair  of  field- 


28  THE   RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

glasses  in  his  hand,  and  covered  by  a  black  and 
red  uniform  that  fitted  him  like  a  jersey.  A 
little  later  he  turned  up  at  a  tennis  party  at  the 
Governor's  in  flannels;  and  after  that  he  came 
back  there  to  dine  in  the  garb  of  every  evening. 
When  the  subaltern  dines  at  mess  he  wears  a 
uniform  which  turns  that  of  the  First  City  Troop 
into  what  looks  in  comparison  like  a  second- 
hand and  ready-made  garment.  The  officers  of 
the  1 3th  Somerset  Light  Infantry  wore  scarlet 
jackets  at  dinner,  with  high  black  silk  waistcoats 
bordered  with  two  inches  of  gold  lace.  The 
jackets  have  gold  buttons  sewed  along  every 
edge  that  presents  itself,  and  offer  glorious 
chances  for  determining  one's  future  by  count- 
ing "poor  man,  rich  man,  beggar- man,  thief." 
When  eighteen  of  these  jackets  are  placed 
around  a  table,  the  chance  civilian  feels  and 
looks  like  an  undertaker. 

Dining  at  mess  is  a  very  serious  function  in  a 
British  regiment.  At  other  times  her  Majesty's 
officers  have  a  reticent  air;  but  at  dinner,  when 
you  are  a  guest,  or  whether  you  are  a  guest  or 
not,  there  is  an  intent  to  please  and  to  be 
pleased  which  is  rather  refreshing. 

We  have  no  regimental  headquarters  in  Amer- 
ica, and  owing  to  our  officers  seeking  promotion 
all  over  the  country,  the  regimental  esprit  de 
corps  is  lacking.  But  in  the  English  army  regi- 
mental feeling  is  very  strong;  father  and  son  fol- 
low on  in  the  same  regiment,  and  now  that  they 
are  naming  them  for  the  counties  from  which 


THK   ROCK   OF   GIBRALTAR  29 

they  are  recruited,  they  are  becoming  very  close 
corporations  indeed.  At  mess  the  traditions  of 
the  regiment  come  into  play,  and  you  can  learn 
then  of  the  actions  in  which  it  has  been  en- 
gaged from  the  engravings  and  paintings  around 
the  walls,  and  from  the  silver  plate  on  the  table 
and  the  flags  stacked  in  the  corner. 

When  a  man  gets  his  company  he  presents 
the  regiment  with  a  piece  of  plate,  or  a  silver 
inkstand,  or  a  picture,  or  something  which  com- 


CANNONS  MASKED   BY   BUSHES 

memorates  a  battle  or  a  man,  and  so  the  regi- 
mental headquarters  are  always  telling  a  story 
of  what  has  been  in  the  past  and  inspiring  fine 
deeds  for  the  future.  Each  regiment  has  its 
peculiarity  of  uniform  or  its  custom  at  mess, 
which  is  distinctive  to  it,  and  which  means  more 
the  longer  it  is  observed.  Those  in  authority 
are  trying  to  do  away  with  these  signs  and  dif- 


30     THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

ferences  in  equipment,  and   are  writing   them- 
selves down  asses  as  they  do  so. 

You  will  notice,  for  instance,  if  you  are  up  in 
such  things,  that  the  sergeants  of  the  I3th  Light 
Infantry  wear  their  sashes  from  the  left  shoulder 
to  the  right  hip,  as  officers  do,  and  not  from  the 
right  shoulder,  as  sergeants  should.  This  means 
that  once  in  a  great  battle  every  officer  of  the 
1 3th  was  killed,  and  the  sergeants,  finding  this  out, 
and  that  they  were  now  in  command,  changed 
their  sashes  to  the  other  shoulder.  And  the  offi- 
cers ever  after  allowed  them  to  do  this,  as  a 
tribute  to  their  brothers  in  command  who  had 
so  conspicuously  obliterated  themselves  and  dis- 
tinguished their  regiment.  There  are  other  tra- 
ditions, such  as  that  no  one  must  mention  a 
woman's  name  at  mess,  except  the  title  of  one 
woman,  to  which  they  rise  and  drink  at  the  end 
of  the  dinner,  when  the  sergeant  gives  the  signal 
to  the  band-master  outside,  and  his  men  play 
the  national  anthem,  while  the  bandmaster 
comes  in,  as  Mr.  Kipling  describes  him  in  "  The 
Drums  of  the  Fore  and  Aft,"  and  "  takes  his 
glass  of  port-wine  with  the  orfficers."  The  Six- 
tieth, or  the  Royal  Rifles,  for  instance,  wear  no 
marks  of  rank  at  the  mess,  in  order  to  express 
the  idea  that  there  they  are  all  equal.  This 
regiment  had  once  for  its  name  the  King's 
American  Rifles,  and  under  that  name  it  took 
Quebec  and  Montreal,  and  I  had  placed  in  front 
of  me  at  mess  one  night  a  little  silver  statuette 
in  the  equipment  of  a  Continental  soldier,  ex- 


THE    ROCK   OF   GIBRALTAR  31 

cept  that  his  coat,  if  it  had  been  colored,  would 
have  been  red,  and  not  blue.  He  was  dated 
1768.  In  the  mess-room  are  pictures  of  the  regi- 
ment swarming  over  the  heights  of  Quebec, 
storming  the  walls  of  Delhi,  and  running  the 
gauntlet  up  the  Nile  as  they  pressed  forward 
to  save  Gordon.  All  of  this  goes  to  make  a  sub- 
altern feel  things  that  are  good  for  him  to  feel. 

Every  day  at  Gibraltar  there  is  tennis,  and 
bands  playing  in  the  Alameda,  and  parades,  or 
riding -parties  across  the  Neutral  Ground  into 
Spain,  and  teas  and  dinners,  at  which  the  young 
ladies  of  the  place  dance  Spanish  dances,  and 
twice  a  week  the  members  of  the  Calpe  Hunt 
meet  in  Spain,  and  chase  foxes  across  the  worst 
country  that  any  Englishman  ever  rode  over  in 
pink.  There  are  no  fences,  but  there  are  ravines 
and  caflons  and  precipices,  down  and  up  and  over 
which  the  horses  scramble  and  jump,  and  over 
which  they  will,  if  the  rider  leaves  them  alone, 
bring  him  safely. 

And  if  you  lose  the  rest  of  the  field,  you  can  go 
to  an  old  Spanish  inn  like  that  which  Don  Quixote 
visited,  with  drunken  muleteers  in  the  court-yard, 
and  the  dining-room  over  the  stable,  and  with 
beautiful  dark -eyed  young  women  to  give  you 
omelet  and  native  wine  and  black  bread.  Or, 
what  is  as  amusing,  you  can  stop  in  at  the  offi- 
cer's guard-room  at  the  North  Front,  and  cheer 
that  gentleman's  loneliness  by  taking  tea  with 
him,  and  drying  your  things  before  his  fire  while 
he  cuts  the  cake,  and  the  women  of  the  party 


32      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

straighten  their  hats  in  front  of  his  glass,  and 
two  Tommies  go  off  for  hot  water. 

There  was  a  very  entertaining  officer  guarding 
the  North  Front  one  night,  and  he  proved  so  en- 
tertaining that  neither  of  us  heard  the  sunset  gun, 
and  so  when  I  reached  the  gate  I  found  it  locked, 
and  the  bugler  of  the  guard  who  take  the  keys  to 
the  Governor  each  night  was  sounding  his  bugle 
half-way  up  the  town.  There  was  a  dark  object 
on  a  wall  to  which  I  addressed  all  my  arguments 
and  explanations,  which  the  object  met  with  re- 
peated requests  to  "  move  on,  now,"  in  the  tone 
of  expostulation  with  which  a  London  policeman 
addresses  a  very  drunken  man. 

I  knew  that  if  I  tried  to  cross  the  Neutral 
Ground  I  would  be  shot  at  for  a  smuggler;  for, 
owing  to  Gibraltar's  being  a  free  port  of  entry, 
these  gentlemen  buy  tobacco  there,  and  carry  it 
home  each  night,  or  run  it  across  the  half-mile  of 
Neutral  Ground  strapped  to  the  backs  of  dogs. 
So  I  wandered  back  again  to  the  entertaining 
officer,  and  he  was  filled  with  remorse,  and  sent 
off  a  note  of  entreaty  to  his  Excellency's  repre- 
sentative, to  whom  he  referred  as  a  D.  A.  A.  G., 
and  whose  name,  he  said,  was  Jones.  We  then 
went  to  the  mess  of  the  officers  guarding  the 
different  approaches,  and  these  gentlemen  kindly 
offered  me  their  own  beds,  proposing  that  they 
themselves  should  sleep  on  three  chairs  and  a 
pile  of  overcoats ;  all  except  one  subaltern,  who 
excused  his  silence  by  saying  diffidently  that  he 
fancied  I  would  not  care  to  sleep  in  the  fever 


THK   ROCK    OF   GIBRALTAR  35 

camp,  of  which  he  had  charge.  I  had  seen  the 
officer  of  the  keys  pass  every  night,  and  the 
guards  turn  out  to  salute  the  keys,  and  I  had 
rather  imagined  that  it  was  more  or  less  of  a 
form,  and  that  the  pomp  and  circumstance  were 
all  there  was  of  it.  I  did  not  believe  that  the 
Rock  was  really  closed  up  at  night  like  a  safe 
with  a  combination  lock.  But  I  know  now  that 
it  is.  A  note  came  back  from  the  mysterious 
D.  A.  A.  G.  saying  I  could  be  admitted  at  elev- 
en ;  but  it  said  nothing  at  all  about  sentries,  nor 
did  the  entertaining  officer.  Subalterns  always 
say  "  Officer  "  when  challenged,  and  the  sentry 
always  murmurs,  "  Pass,  officer,  and  all's  well," 
in  an  apologetic  growl.  But  I  suppose  I  did 
not  say  "  Officer  "  as  I  had  been  told  to  do,  with 
any  show  of  confidence,  for  every  sentry  who  ap- 
peared that  night  —  and  there  seemed  to  be  a 
regiment  of  them — would  not  have  it  at  all,  and 
wanted  further  data,  and  wanted  it  quick.  Even 
if  you  have  an  order  from  a  D.  A.  A.  G.  named 
Jones,  it  is  very  difficult  to  explain  about  it 
when  you  don't  know  whether  to  speak  of  him 
as  the  D.  A.  A.  G.  or  as  General  Jones,  and 
especially  when  a  young  and  inexperienced 
shadow  is  twisting  his  gun  about  so  that  the 
moonlight  plays  up  and  down  the  very  longest 
bayonet  ever  issued  by  a  civilized  nation.  They 
were  not  nice  sentries,  either,  like  those  on  the 
Rock,  who  stand  where  you  can  see  them,  and 
who  challenge  you  drowsily,  like  cabmen,  and 
make  the  empty  streets  less  lonely  than  otherwise. 


36     THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

They  were,  on  the  contrary,  fierce  and  in  a 
terrible  hurry,  and  had  a  way  of  jumping  out  of 
the  shadow  with  a  rattle  of  the  gun  and  a  shout 
that  brought  nerve-storms  in  successive  shocks. 
To  make  it  worse,  I  had  gone  over  the  post, 
while  waiting  for  word  from  the  D.  A.  A.  G.,  to 
hear  the  sentries  recite  their  instructions  to  the 
entertaining  officer.  They  did  this  rather  badly, 
I  thought,  the  only  portion  of  the  rules,  indeed, 
which  they  seemed  to  have  by  heart  being  those 
which  bade  them  not  to  allow  cows  to  trespass 
"without  a  permit,"  which  must  have  impressed 
them  by  its  humor,  and  the  fact  that  when  ap- 
proached within  fifty  yards  they  were  "  to  fire 
low."  I  found  when  challenged  that  night  that 
this  was  the  only  part  of  their  instructions  that  I 
also  could  remember. 

This  was  the  only  trying  experience  of  my 
stay  in  Gibraltar,  and  it  is  brought  in  here  as  a 
compliment  to  the  force  that  guards  the  North 
Front.  For  of  them,  and  the  rest  of  the  inhab- 
itants and  officers  of  the  garrison,  any  one  who 
visits  there  can  only  think  well ;  and  I  hope 
when  the  Rock  is  attacked,  as  it  never  will  be, 
that  they  will  all  cover  themselves  with  glory. 
It  never  will  be  attacked,  for  the  reason  that  the 
American  people  are  the  only  people  clever 
enough  to  invent  a  way  of  taking  it,  and  they 
are  far  too  clever  to  attempt  an  impossible 
thing. 


II 

TANGIER 

GREAT  many  thousand  years  ago 
Hercules  built  the  mountain  of  Ab- 
yla  and  its  twin  mountain  which  we 
call  Gibraltar.  It  was  supposed  to 
mark  the  limits  of  the  unknown 
world,  and  it  would  seem  from  casual  inspection, 
as  I  suggested  in  the  last  chapter,  that  it  serves 
the  same  purpose  to  this  day.  Men  have  crept 
into  Africa  and  crept  out  again,  like  flies  over  a 
ceiling,  and  they  have  gained  much  renown  at 
Africa's  expense  for  having  done  so.  They  have 
built  little  .towns  along  its  coasts,  and  run  little 
rocking,  bumping  railroads  into  its  forests,  and 
dragged  launches  over  its  cataracts,  and  parti- 
tioned it  off  among  emperors  and  powers  and 
trading  companies,  without  having  ventured  into 
the  countries  they  pretend  to  have  subdued. 
But  from  Paul  du  Chaillu  to  W.  A.  Chanler,  "  the 
Last  Explorer,"  as  he  has  been  called,  just  how 
much  rnore  do  we  know  of  Africa  than  did  the 
Romans  whose  bridges  still  stand  in  Tangier? 
The  "  Last  Explorer  "  sounds  well,  and  is  dis- 


38      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

tinctly  a  mot,  but  there  will  be  other  explorers 
to  go,  and  perhaps  to  return.  There  are  still  a 
few  things  for  us  to  learn.  The  Spaniards  and 
the  Pilgrim  fathers  touched  the  unknown  world 
of  America  only  four  hundred  years  ago,  and  to- 
day any  commercial  traveller  can  tell  you,  with 
the  aid  of  an  A  B  C  railroad  guide,  the  name  of 
every  town  in  any  part  of  it.  But  Turks  and 
Romans  and  Spaniards,  and,  of  late,  English  and 
Germans  and  French,  have  been  pecking  and 
nibbling  at  Africa  like  little  mice  around  a 
cheese,  and  they  are  still  nibbling  at  the  rind, 
and  know  as  little  of  the  people  they  "  protect," 
and  of  the  countries  they  have  annexed  and  col- 
onized, as  did  Hannibal  and  Scipio.  The  Amer- 
ican forests  have  been  turned  into  railroad  ties 
and  telegraph  poles,  and  the  American  Indian 
has  been  "exterminated"  or  taught  to  plough 
and  to  wear  a  high  hat.  The  cowboy  rides  free- 
ly over  the  prairies;  the  Indian  agent  cheats  the 
Indian  —  the  Indian  does  not  cheat  him;  the 
Germans  own  Milwaukee  and  Cincinnati ;  the 
Irish  rule  everywhere;  even  the  much -abused 
Chinaman  hangs  out  his  red  sign  in  every  corner 
of  the  country.  There  is  not  a  nation  of  the 
globe  that  has  not  its  hold  upon  and  does  not 
make  fortunes  out  of  the  continent  of  America; 
but  the  continent  of  Africa  remains  just  as  it 
was,  holding  back  its  secret,  and  still  content  to 
be  the  unknown  world. 

You  need  not  travel  far  into  Africa  to  learn 
this ;  you  can  find  out  how  little  we  know  of  it 


TANGIER  39 

at  its  very  shore.  This  city  of  Tangier,  lying 
but  three  hours  off  from  Gibraltar's  civilization, 
on  the  nearest  coast  of  Africa,  can  teach  you 
how  little  we  or  our  civilized  contemporaries  un- 
derstand of  these  barbarians  and  of  their  bar- 
barous ways. 

A  few  months  since  England  sent  her  ambas- 
sador to  treat  with  the  Sultan  of  Morocco;  it 
was  an  untaught  blackamoor  opposed  to  a  dip- 
lomat and  a  gentleman,  and  a  representative 
of  the  most  civilized  and  powerful  of  empires, 
and  we  have  Stephen  Bonsai's  picture  of  this 
ambassador  and  his  suite  riding  back  along  the 
hot,  sandy  trail  from  Fez,  baffled  and  ridiculed 
and  beaten.  So  that  when  I  was  in  Tangier, 
half -naked  Moors,  taking  every  white  stranger 
for  an  Englishman,  would  point  a  finger  at  me 
and  cry,  "  Your  Sultana  a  fool ;  the  Sultan  only 
wise."  Which  shows  what  a  superior  people  we 
are  when  we  get  away  from  home,  and  how  well 
the  English  understand  the  people  they  like  to 
protect. 

Tangier  lies  like  a  mass  of  drifted  snow  on  the 
green  hills  below,  and  over  the  point  of  rock  on 
which  stands  its  fortress,  and  from  which  waves 
the  square  red  flag  of  Morocco.  It  is  a  fine 
place  spoiled  by  civilization.  And  not  a  nice 
quality  of  civilization  either.  Back  of  it,  in 
Tetuan  or  Fez,  you  can  understand  what  Tan- 
gier once  was  and  see  the  Moor  at  his  best. 
There  he  lives  in  the  exclusiveness  which  his  re- 
ligion teaches  him  is  right — an  exclusiveness  to 


4O      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

which  the  hauteur  of  an  Englishman,  and  his 
fear  that  some  one  is  going  to  speak  to  him  on 
purpose,  become  a  gracious  manner  and  suggest 
undue  familiarity.  You  see  the  Moor  at  his  best 
in  Tangier  too,  but  he  is  never  in  his  complete 
setting  as  he  is  in  the  inland  cities,  for  when 
you  walk  abroad  in  Tangier  you  are  constantly 
brought  back  to  the  new  world  by  the  presence 
and  abodes  of  the  foreign  element ;  a  French 
shop  window  touches  a  bazar,  and  a  Moor  in  his 
finest  robes  is  followed  by  a  Spaniard  in  his 
black  cape  or  an  Englishman  in  a  tweed  suit, 
for  the  Englishman  learns  nothing  and  forgets 
nothing.  He  may  live  in  Tangier  for  years,  but 
he  never  learns  to  wear  a  burnoose,  or  forgets 
to  put  on  the  coat  his  tailor  has  sent  him  from 
home  as  the  latest  in  fashion.  The  first  thing 
which  meets  your  eye  on  entering  the  harbor  at 
Tangier  is  an  immense  blue-and-white  enamel 
sign  asking  you  to  patronize  the  English  store 
for  groceries  and  provisions.  It  strikes  you  as 
much  more  barbarous  than  the  Moors  who  come 
scrambling  over  the  vessel's  side. 

They  come  with  a  rush  and  with  wild  yells  be- 
fore the  little  steamer  has  stopped  moving,  and 
remind  you  of  their  piratical  ancestors.  They 
look  quite  as  fierce,  and  as  they  throw  their 
brown  bare  legs  over  the  bulwarks  and  leap  and 
scramble,  pushing  and  shouting  in  apparently 
the  keenest  stage  of  excitement  and  rage,  they 
only  need  long  knives  between  their  teeth  and  a 
cutlass  to  convince  you  that  you  are  at  the 


BREAD   MERCHANTS   AT  THE  GATE 


TANGIER  43 

mercy  of  the  Barbary  pirates,  and  not  merely  of 
hotel  porters  and  guides. 

My  guide  was  a  Moor  named  Mahamed.  I 
had  him  about  a  week,  or  rather,  to  speak  quite 
correctly,  he  had  me.  I  do  not  know  how  he  ef- 
fected my  capture,  but  he  went  with  me,  I  think, 
because  no  one  else  would  have  him,  and  he  ac- 
cordingly imposed  on  my  good-nature.  As  we 
say  a  man  is  "good-natured"  when  there  is  ab- 
solutely nothing  else  to  be  said  for  him,  I  hope 
when  I  say  this  that  I  shall  not  be  accused  of 
trying  to  pay  myself  a  compliment.  Mahamed 
was  a  tall  Moor,  with  a  fine  array  of  different- 
colored  robes  and  coats  and  undercoats,  and  a 
large  white  turban  around  his  fez,  which  marked 
the  fact  that  he  was  either  married  or  that  he 
had  made  a  pilgrimage  to  Mecca.  He  followed 
me  from  morning  until  night,  with  the  fidelity  of 
a  lamb,  and  with  its  sheeplike  stupidity.  No 
amount  of  argument  or  money  or  abuse  could 
make  him  leave  my  side.  Mahamed  was  not 
even  picturesque,  for  he  wore  a  large  pair  of 
blue  spectacles  and  Congress  gaiters.  This  hurt 
my  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things  very  much. 
His  idea  of  serving  me  was  to  rush  on  ahead 
and  shove  all  the  little  donkeys  and  blind  beg- 
gars and  children  out  of  my  way,  at  which  the 
latter  would  weep,  and  I  would  have  to  go  back 
and  bribe  them  into  cheerfulness  again.  In  this 
way  he  made  me  most  unpopular  with  the 
masses,  and  cost  me  a  great  deal  in  trying  to  buy 
their  favor.  I  was  never  so  completely  at  the 


44     THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

mercy  of  any  one  before,  and  I  hope  he  found 
me  ''intelligent,  courteous,  and  a  good  linguist." 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  there  is  very  little  need  of 
a  guide  in  Tangier.  It  has  but  few  show  places, 
for  the  place  itself  is  the  show.  You  can  find 
your  best  entertainment  in  picking  your  way 
through  its  winding,  narrow  streets,  and  in  wan- 
dering about  the  open  market-places.  The  high- 
ways of  Tangier  are  all  very  crooked  and  very 
steep.  They  are  also  very  uneven  and  dirty,  and 
one  walks  sometimes  for  hundreds  of  yards  in  a 
maze  of  dark  alleys  and  little  passageways  walled 
in  by  whitewashed  walls,  and  sheltered  from  the 
sun  by  archways  and  living-rooms  hanging  from 
one  side  of  the  street  to  the  other.  Green  and 
blue  doorways,  through  which  one  must  stoop 
to  enter,  open  in  from  the  street,  and  you  are 
constantly  hearing  them  shut  as  you  pass,  as 
some  of  the  women  of  the  household  recognize 
the  presence  of  a  foreigner.  You  are  never  quite 
sure  as  to  what  you  will  meet  in  the  streets  or 
what  may  be  displayed  at  your  elbow  before  the 
doors  of  the  bazars.  The  odors  of  frying  meat 
and  of  fresh  fruit  and  of  herbs,  and  of  soap  in 
great  baskets,  and  of  black  coffee  and  hasheesh, 
come  to  you  from  cafe's  and  tiny  shops  hardly  as 
big  as  a  packing -box.  These  are  shut  up  at 
night  by  two  half-doors,  of  which  the  upper  one 
serves  as  a  shield  from  the  sun  by  day  and  the 
lower  as  a  pair  of  steps.  In  the  wider  streets 
are  the  bazars,  magnificent  with  color  and  with 
the  glitter  of  gold  lace  and  of  brass  plaques  and 


TANGtEft  45 

silver  daggers;  handsome,  comfortable -looking 
Moors  sit  crossed -legged  in  the  middle  of  their 
small  extent  like  soldiers  in  a  sentry-box,  and 
speak  leisurely  with  their  next-door  neighbor 
without  gesture,  unless  they  grow  excited  over  a 
bargain,  and  with  a  haughty  contempt  for  the 
passing  Christian.  There  is  always  something 
beneficial  in  feeling  that  you  are  thoroughly  de- 
spised;  and  when  a  whole  community  combines 
to  despise  you,  and  looks  over  your  head  gravely 
as  you  pass,  you  begin  to  feel  that  those  Moors 
who  do  not  apparently  hold  you  in  contempt  are 
a  very  poor  and  middle-class  sort  of  people,  and 
you  would  much  prefer  to  be  overlooked  by  a 
proud  Moor  than  shaken  hands  with  by  a  per- 
verted one.  But  the  pride  of  the  rich  Moorish 
gentlemen  is  nothing  compared  to  the  fanatic  in- 
tolerance of  the  poor  farmers  from  the  country 
of  the  tribes  who  come  in  on  market-day,  and 
who  hate  the  Christian  properly  as  the  Koran 
tells  them  they  should.  They  stalk  through  the 
narrow  street  with  both  eyes  fixed  on  a  point  far 
ahead  of  them,  with  head  and  shoulders  erect 
and  arms  swinging.  They  brush  against  you  as 
though  you  were  a  camel  or  a  horse,  and  had 
four  legs  on  which  to  stand  instead  of  two. 
Sometimes  a  foreigner  forgets  that  these  men 
from  the  desert,  where  the  foreign  clement  has 
not  come,  are  following  out  the  religious  train- 
ing of  a  lifetime,  and  strikes  at  one  of  them  with 
his  riding-whip,  and  then  takes  refuge  in  a  con- 
sulate  and  leaves  on  the  next  boat. 


46  _THE    RULERS    OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

I  find  it  very  hard  not  to  sympathize  with  the 
Moors.  The  Englishman  is  always  preaching 
that  an  Englishman's  house  is  his  castle,  and  yet 
he  invades  this  country,  he  and  his  French  and 
Spanish  and  American  cousins,  and  demands 
that  not  only  he  shall  be  treated  well,  but  that 
any  native  of  the  country,  any  subject  of  the 
Sultan,  who  chooses  to  call  himself  an  American 
or  an  Englishman  shall  be  protected  too.  Of 
course  he  knows  that  he  is  not  wanted  there ; 
he  knows  he  is  forcing  himself  on  the  barbarian, 
and  that  all  the  barbarian  has  ever  asked  of  him 
is  to  be  let  alone.  But  he  comes,  and  he  rides 
around  in  his  baggy  breeches  and  varnished 
boots,  and  he  gets  up  polo  games  and  cricket 
matches,  and  gallops  about  in  a  pink  coat  after 
foxes,  and  asks  for  bitter  ale,  and  complains  be- 
cause he  cannot  get  his  bath,  and  all  the  rest 
of  it,  quite  as  if  he  had  been  begged  to  come 
and  to  stop  as  long  as  he  liked.  Sometimes  you 
find  a  foreigner  who  tries  to  learn  something  of 
these  people,  a  man  like  the  late  Mr.  Leared  or 
"  Bebe  "  Carleton,  who  can  speak  all  their  dia- 
lects, and  who  has  more  power  with  the  Sultan 
than  has  any  foreign  minister,  and  who,  if  the 
Sultan  will  not  pay  you  for  the  last  shipment  of 
guns  you  sent  him,  or  for  the  grand  -  piano  for 
the  harem,  is  the  man  to  get  you  your  money. 
But  the  average  foreign  resident,  as  far  as  I  can 
see,  neither  adopts  the  best  that  the  Moor,  has 
found  good,  nor  introduces  what  the  Moor  most 
needs,  and  what  he  does  not  know  or  care 


TANGIER 


47 


enough  about  to  introduce  for  himself.  Tan- 
gier,  for  instance,  is  excellently  adapted  by  nat- 
ure for  the  purposes  of  good  sanitation,  but 
the  arrangements  are  as  bad  and  primitive  as 
they  were  before  a  foreigner  came  into  the 
place.  They  consist  in  dumping  the  refuse  of 
the  streets,  into  which  everything  is  thrown,  over 
the  sea-wall  out  on  the  rocks  below,  where  the 
pigs  gather  up  what  they  want,  and  the  waves 
wash  the  remainder  back  on  the  coast. 


SANITARY  OUTFIT   DUMI'INC,    RF.KfSK  OVER    TIIK   WAI.I. 

If  some  of  the  foreign  ministers  would  use 
their  undoubted  influence  with  the  Bashaw  to 
amend  this,  instead  of  introducing  point-to-point 
pony  races,  they  might  in  time  show  some  rea- 
son for  their  invasion  of  Morocco  other  than  the 
curious  and  obvious  one  that  they  all  grow  rich 
there  while  doing  nothing.  The  foreign  resident 
has  a  very  great  contempt  for  the  Moor.  He 


48  THE   RULERS   OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

says  the  Moor  is  a  great  liar  and  a  rogue.  When 
people  used  to  ask  Walter  Scott  if  it  was  he  who 
wrote  the  Waverley  Novels  he  used  to  tell  them 
it  was  not,  and  he  excused  this  afterwards  by  say- 
ing that  if  you  are  asked  an  impertinent  or  im- 
possible question  you  have  the  right  not  to  an- 
swer it  or  to  tell  an  untruth.  The  very  presence 
of  the  foreigner  is  an  impertinence  in  the  eyes 
of  the  Moor,  and  so  he  naturally  does  not  feel 
severe  remorse  when  he  baffles  the  foreign  in- 
vader, and  does  it  whenever  he  can. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  foreign  invader  at 
Tangier  is  not,  in  a  number  of  cases,  in  a  posi- 
tion in  which  he  can  gracefully  throw  down 
gauntlets.  There  is  something  about  these  hot, 
raw  countries,  hidden  out  of  the  way  of  public 
opinion  and  police  courts  and  the  respectability 
which  drives  a  gig,  that  makes  people  forget  the 
rules  and  axioms  laid  down  in  the  temperate 
zone  for  the  guidance  of  tax-payers  and  all  rep- 
utable citizens.  As  the  sailors  say,  "  There  is  no 
Sunday  south  of  the  equator.''  It  is  hard  to  tell 
just  what  it  is,  but  the  sun,  or  the  example  of 
the  barbarians,  or  the  fact  that  the  world  is  so 
far  away,  breeds  queer  ideas,  and  one  hears 
stories  one  would  not  care  to  print  as  long  as 
the  law  of  libel  obtains  in  the  land.  You  have 
often  read  in  novels,  especially  French  novels,  or 
have  heard  men  on  the  stage  say:  "  Come,  let  us 
leave  this  place,  with  its  unjust  laws  and  cruel 
bigotry.  We  will  go  to  some  unknown  corner 
of  the  earth,  where  we  will  make  a  new  home. 


TANGIER  49 

And  there,  under  a  new  flag  and  a  new  name,  we 
will  forget  the  sad  past,  and  enter  into  a  new 
world  of  happiness  and  content." 

When  you  hear  a  man  on  the  stage  say  that, 
you  can  make  up  your  mind  that  he  is  going  to 
Tangier.  It  may  be  that  he  goes  there  with 
somebody  else's  money,  or  somebody  else's  wife, 
or  that  he  has  had  trouble  with  a  check;  or,  as 
in  the  case  of  one  young  man  who  was  feted  and 
dined  there,  had  robbed  a  diamond  store  in 
Brooklyn,  and  is  now  in  Sing  Sing;  or,  as  in  the 
case  of  a  recent  American  consul,  had  sold  his 
protection  for  two  hundred  dollars  to  any  one 
who  wanted  it,  and  was  recalled  under  several 
clouds.  And  you  hear  stories  of  ministers  who 
retire  after  receiving  an  income  of  a  few  hundred 
pounds  a  year  with  two  hundred  thousand  dol- 
lars they  have  saved  out  of  it,  and  of  cruelty  and 
bursts  of  sudden  passion  that  would  undoubted- 
ly cause  a  lynching  in  the  chivalric  and  civilized 
states  of  Alabama  or  Tennessee.  And  so  when 
I  heard  why  several  of  the  people  of  Tangier  had 
come  there,  and  why  they  did  not  go  away  again, 
I  began  to  feel  thai  the  barbarian,  whose  forefa- 
thers swept  Spain  and  terrorized  the  whole  of 
Catholic  Europe,  had  more  reason  than  he  knew 
for  despising  the  Christian  who  is  waiting  to  give 
to  his  country  the  benefits  of  civilization. 

Tangier's  beauty  lies  in  so  many  different 
things — in  the  monk-like  garb  of  the  men  and 
in  the  white  muffled  figures  of  the  women;  in  the 
brilliancy  of  its  sky,  and  of  the  sea  dashing  upon 

4 


50      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

the  rocks  and  tossing  the  feluccas  with  their 
three-cornered  sails  from  side  to  side ;  and  in  the 
green  towers  of  the  mosques,  and  the  listless 
leaves  of  the  royal  palms  rising  from  the  centre 
of  a  mass  of  white  roofs;  and,  above  all,  in  the 
color  and  movement  of  the  bazars  and  streets. 
The  streets  represent  absolute  equality.  They 
are  at  the  widest  but  three  yards  across,  and 
every  one  pushes,  and  apparently  every  one  has 
something  to  sell,  or  at  least  something  to  say, 
for  they  all  talk  and  shout  at  once,  and  cry  at 
their  donkeys  or  abuse  whoever  touches  them. 
A  water-carrier,  with  his  goat -skin  bag  on  his 
back  and  his  finger  on  the  tube  through  which 
the  water  comes,  jostles  you  on  one  side,  and  a 
slave  as  black  and  shiny  as  a  patent-leather  boot 
shoves  you  on  the  other  as  he  makes  way  for  his 
master  on  a  fine  white  Arabian  horse  with  brill- 
iant trappings  and  a  huge  contempt  for  the  don- 
keys in  his  way.  It  is  worth  going  to  Tangier  if 
for  no  other  reason  than  to  see  a  slave,  and  to 
grasp  the  fact  that  he  costs  anywhere  from  a  hun- 
dred to  five  hundred  dollars.  To  the  older  gen- 
eration this  may  not  seem  worth  while,  but  to 
the  present  generation  —  those  of  it  who  were 
born  after  Richmond  was  taken — it  is  a  new  and 
momentous  sensation  to  look  at  a  man  as  fine  and 
stalwart  and  human  as  one  of  your  own  people, 
and  feel  that  he  cannot  strike  for  higher  wages, 
or  even  serve  as  a  parlor-car  porter  or  own  a  bar- 
ber-shop, but  must  work  out  for  life  the  two  hun- 
dred dollars  his  owner  paid  for  him  at  Fez. 


TANGIER  5 1 

There  is  more  movement  in  Tangier  than  I 
have  ever  noticed  in  a  place  of  its  size.  Every 
one  is  either  looking  on  cross-legged  from  the 
bazars  and  coffee-shops,  or  rushing,  pushing,  and 
screaming  in  the  street.  It  is  most  bewildering; 
if  you  turn  to  look  after  a  particularly  magnifi- 
cent Moor,  or  a  half- naked  holy  man  from  the 
desert  with  wild  eyes  and  hair  as  long  as  a  horse's 
mane,  you  are  trodden  upon  by  a  string  of  don- 
keys carrying  kegs  of  water,  or  pushed  to  one 
side  by  a  soldier  with  a  gun  eight  feet  long. 

There  is  something  continually  interesting  in 
the  muffled  figures  of  the  women.  They  make 
you  almost  ashamed  of  the  uncovered  faces  of  the 
American  women  in  the  town ;  and,  in  the  lack  of 
any  evidence  to  the  contrary,  you  begin  to  be- 
lieve every  Moorish  woman  or  girl  you  meet  is 
as  beautiful  as  her  eyes  would  make  it  appear 
that  she  is.  Those  of  the  Moorish  girls  whose 
faces  I  saw  were  distinctly  handsome;  they  were 
the  women  Benjamin  Constant  paints  in  his  pict- 
ures of  Algiers,  and  about  whom  Pierre  Loti  goes 
into  ecstasies  in  his  book  on  Tangier.  Their  robe 
or  cloak,  or  whatever  the  thing  is  that  they  affect, 
covers  the  head  like  a  hood,  and  with  one  hand 
they  hold  one  of  its  folds  in  front  of  the  face  as 
high  as  their  eyes,  or  keep  it  in  place  by  biting 
it  between  their  teeth. 

The  only  time  that  I  ever  saw  the  face  of 
any  of  them  was  when  I  occasionally  eluded 
M plumed  and  ran  off  with  a  little  guide  called 
Isaac,  the  especial  protector  of  two  American 


52      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

women,  who  farmed  him  out  to  me  when  they 
preferred  to  remain  in  the  hotel.  He  is  a  par- 
ticularly beautiful  youth,  and  I  noticed  that 
whenever  he  was  with  me  the  cloaks  of  the  wom- 
en had  a  fashion  of  coming  undone,  and  they 
would  lower  them  for  an  instant  and  look  at 
Isaac,  and  then  replace  them  severely  upon  the 
bridge  of  the  nose.  Then  Isaac  would  turn  tow- 
ards me  with  a  shy  conscious  smile  and  blush  vi- 
olently. Isaac  says  that  the  young  men  of  Tan- 
gier can  tell  whether  or  not  a  girl  is  pretty  by 
looking  at  her  feet.  It  is  true  that  their  feet  are 
bare,  but  it  struck  me  as  being  a  somewhat  reck- 
less test  for  selecting  a  bride.  I  will  recommend 
Isaac  to  whoever  thinks  of  going  to  Tangier. 
He  speaks  eight  languages,  is  eighteen  years  old, 
wears  beautiful  and  barbarous  garments,  and  is 
always  happy.  He  is  especially  good  at  making 
bargains,  and  he  entertained  me  for  many  half- 
hours  while  I  sat  and  watched  him  fighting  over 
two  dollars  more  or  less  with  the  proprietors  of 
the  bazars.  He  was  an  antagonist  worthy  of  the 
oldest  and  proudest  Moor  in  Tangier.  He  had 
no  respect  for  their  rage  or  their  contempt  or 
their  proffered  bribes  or  their  long  white  beards. 
Sometimes  he  would  laugh  them  to  scorn — them 
and  their  prices;  and  again  he  would  talk  to  them 
sadly  and  plaintively  ;  and  again  he  would  stamp 
and  rage  and  slap  his  hands  at  them  and  rush  off 
with  a  great  show  of  disgust,  until  they  called  him 
back  again,  when  he  and  they  would  go  over  the 
performance  once  more  with  unabated  interest. 


TANGIER  53 

M.ihamed  always  paid  them  what  they  asked, 
and  got  his  commission  from  them  later,  as  a 
guide  should;  but  Isaac  would  storm  and  finally 
beat  them  down  one-half.  Isaac  can  be  found  at 
the  Calpe  Hotel,  and  is  welcome  to  whatever  this 
notice  may  be  worth  to  him. 


A    WOMAN   OF   TANGIER 


I  had  read  in  books  on  Morocco  and  had  been 
given  to  understand  that  when  you  were  told 
that  the  price  of  anything  in  a  bazar  was  worth 
three  dollars,  you  should  offer  one,  and  that  then 
the  Moor  would  cry  aloud  to  Allah  to  take  note 
of  the  insult,  and  would  ask  you  to  sit  down  and 
have  a  cup  of  coffee,  and  that  he  would  then  beat 
you  up  and  you  would  beat  him  down,  and  that 
at  the  end  of  two  or  three  hours  you  would  get 
what  you  wanted  for  two  dollars.  It  struck  me 


54      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

that  this,  if  one  had  several  months  to  spare  and 
wanted  anything  badly  enough,  might  be  rather 
amusing.  The  first  thing  I  saw  that  I  wanted 
badly  was  a  long  gun,  for  which  the  Moor  asked 
me  twelve  dollars.  I  offered  him  eight.  I  then 
waited  to  see  him  tear  his  beard  and  unwrap  his 
turban  and  cry  aloud  to  Allah;  but  he  did  none 
of  these  things.  He  merely  put  the  gun  back  in 
its  place  and  continued  the  conversation,  which  I 
had  so  flippantly  interrupted,  with  a  long-bearded 
friend.  And  no  further  remarks  on  my  part  af- 
fected him  in  the  least,  and  I  was  forced  to  go 
away  feeling  very  much  ashamed  and  very  mean. 
The  next  day  a  man  at  the  hotel  brought  in  the 
gun,  having  paid  fourteen  dollars  for  it,  and  said 
he  would  not  sell  it  for  fifty.  We  would  pay 
much  more  than  that  for  it  at  home,  which  shows 
that  you  cannot  always  follow  guide-books. 

There  are  only  five  things  the  guides  take  you 
to  see  in  Tangier — the  cafe  chantant,  the  govern- 
or's palace,  the  prisons,  and  the  harem,  to  which 
men  are  not  admitted.  They  also  take  you  to 
see  the  markets,  but  you  can  see  them  for  your- 
self. The  markets  are  bare,  open  places  covered 
with  stones  and  lined  with  bazars,  and  on  market- 
days  peopled  with  thousands  of  muffled  figures 
selling  or  trying  to  sell  herbs  and  eggs  and  every- 
thing else  that  is  eatable,  from  dates  to  haunches 
of  mutton.  It  is  a  wonderfully  picturesque  sight, 
with  the  sun  trickling  through  the  palm-leaf  mats 
overhead  on  the  piles  of  yellow  melons  at  your 
feet,  and  with  strings  of  camels  dislocating  their 


TANGIER  55 

countenances  over  their  grain,  and  dancing-men 
and  snake-charmers  and  story-tellers,  as  eloquent 
as  actors,  clamoring  on  every  side. 

The  cafe  chantant  is  a  long  room  lined  with 
mats,  and  with  rugs  scattered  over  the  floor,  on 
which  sit  musicians  and  the  regular  customers  of 
the  place,  who  play  cards  and  smoke  long  pipes, 
with  which  they  rap  continually  on  the  tin  ash- 
holders.  The  music  is  very  strange,  to  say  the 
least,  and  the  singing  very  startling,  full  of  sudden 
pauses,  and  beginning  again  after  one  of  these 
when  you  think  the  song  is  over.  It  is  not  a  par- 
ticularly exciting  place  to  visit,  but  there  is  no 
choice  between  that  and  the  hotel  smoking-room. 
Tangier  is  not  a  town  where  one  can  move  about 
much  at  night.  There  is  also  a  place  where  the 
guests  tell  you  that  you  can  see  Moorish  women 
dance  the  dance  which  so  startled  Paris  in  the 
Algerian  exhibit  at  the  exposition.  As  I  had  no 
desire  to  be  startled  in  that  way  again,  I  did  not 
go  to  see  them,  and  so  cannot  say  what  they  are 
like.  But  it  is  quite  safe  to  say  that  any  visitor 
to  Tangier  who  thinks  he  is  seeing  anything  that 
is  real  and  native  to  the  home  life  of  the  people, 
and  that  is  not  a  show  gotten  up  by  the  guides, 
is  going  to  be  greatly  taken  in.  The  harem  to 
which  they  lead  women  is  not  a  harem  at  all,  but 
the  home  of  the  widow  of  an  ex-governor,  who 
sits  with  her  daughters  for  strange  women  to 
look  at.  It  is  a  most  undignified  proceeding  on 
the  part  of  the  widow  of  a  dead  Bashaw,  and  no 
one  but  the  guides  know  what  she  is  doing.  I 


56      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

came  to  find  out  about  it  through  some  American 
women  who  went  there  with  Isaac  in  the  morn- 
ing, and  were  taken  to  call  at  the  same  place  by 
an  English  lady  resident  in  the  afternoon.  The 
English  woman  laughed  at  them  for  thinking 
they  had  seen  the  interior  of  a  harem,  and  they 
did  not  tell  her  that  they  had  already  visited  her 
friends  and  paid  their  franc  for  admittance  to 
their  society. 

The  other  show  places  are  the  governor's  pal- 
ace and  the  prisons.  The  palace  is  a  very  hand- 
some Moorish  building,  and  the  prisons  are  very 
dirty.  All  that  the  tourist  can  see  of  them  is  the 
little  he  can  discern  through  a  hole  cut  in  the 
stout  wooden  door  of  each,  which  is  the  only  exit 
and  entrance.  You  cannot  see  much  even  then, 
for  the  prisoners,  as  soon  as  they  discover  a  face  at 
the  opening,  stick  it  full  of  the  palm-leaf  baskets 
that  they  make  and  sell  in  order  to  buy  food. 
The  government  gives  them  neither  water,  which 
is  expensive  in  Tangier,  nor  bread,  unless  they 
are  dying  for  want  of  it,  but  expects  the  family 
or  friends  of  each  criminal  to  see  that  he  is  kept 
alive  until  he  has  served  out  his  term  of  impris- 
onment. 

A  great  deal  has  been  written  about  these  pris- 
ons of  the  Sultan,  and  of  the  cruelty  shown  to 
the  inmates,  notably  of  late  by  a  Mr.  Mackenzie 
in  the  London  Times.  You  are  told  that  in  Tan- 
gier, within  the  four  square  walls  of  the  prison, 
there  are  madmen  and  half -starved  murderers 
and  rebels,  loaded  with  chains,  dying  of  disease 


\\  \IIK   VINDIK    AT    TIIK    DOOR    oK   A    PRIVATE   HOL'SK 


TANGIER  59 

and  want,  who  are  tortured  and  starved  until 
they  die.  For  this  reason  no  one  in  Morocco  is 
sentenced  for  more  than  ten  or  twelve  years,  so 
you  are  told,  because  he  is  sure  to  die  before  that 
time  has  expired.  It  seemed  to  me  that  if  this 
were  true  it  would  be  worth  while  to  visit  the 
prison  and  to  tell  what  one  saw  there.  When  I 
was  informed  that,  with  the  exception  of  two 
residents  of  Tangier,  no  one  has  been  allowed  to 
enter  the  Sultan's  prison  for  the  last  ten  years,  I 
suspected  that  there  must  be  something  there 
which  the  Sultan  did  not  want  seen  :  it  was  not 
a  difficult  deduction  to  make.  So  I  set  about 
getting  into  the  prison.  It  is  not  at  all  necessary 
to  go  into  the  details  of  my  endeavors,  or  to  tell 
what  proposals  I  made ;  it  is  quite  sufficient  to 
say  that  in  every  way  I  was  eminently  unsuccess- 
ful. It  was  interesting,  however,  to  find  a  people 
to  whom  the  arguments  and  inducements  which 
had  proved  effective  with  one's  own  countrymen 
were  foolish  and  incomprehensible.  For  two 
days  I  haunted  the  outer  walls  of  the  prison,  and 
was  smiled  upon  contemptuously  by  the  Bashaw's 
counsellors,  who  sat  calmly  in  the  cool  hallway  of 
the  palace,  and  watched  me  kicking  impatiently 
at  the  stones  in  the  court-yard  and  broiling  in  the 
sun,  while  the  governor  or  Bashaw  returned  me 
polite  expressions  of  his  regret.  I  finally  dragged 
the  Consul-General  into  it,  and  brought  things  to 
such  a  pass  that  I  could  see  no  way  out  of  it  but 
my  admittance  to  the  prison  or  a  declaration  of 
war  from  the  United  States. 


60     THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

Either  event  seemed  to  promise  exciting  and 
sensational  developments.  Colonel  Mathews,  the 
Consul-General,  did  not,  however,  share  my  views, 
but  arranged  that  I  should  have  an  audience  with 
the  Bashaw,  during  the  course  of  which  he  prom- 
ised he  would  bring  up  the  question  of  my  ad- 
mittance to  the  prison.  9 

On  board  the  Fulda,  I  had  had  the  pleasure  of 
sitting  at  table  next  to  the  Rev.  Dr.  Henry  M. 
Field,  the  editor  of  the  Evangelist,  and  a  distin- 
guished traveller  in  many  lands.  While  on  the 
steamer  I  had  twitted  the  doctor  with  not  having 
seen  certain  phases  of  life  with  which,  it  seemed 
to  me,  he  should  be  more  familiar,  and  I  offered, 
on  finding  we  were  making  the  same  tour  for  the 
same  purpose,  to  introduce  him  to  bull-fights  and 
pig-sticking  and  cafes  chantants,  and  other  inci- 
dents of  foreign  travel,  of  which  he  seemed  to  be 
ignorant.  He  refused  my  offer  with  dignity,  but 
I  think  with  some  regret.  I  was,  nevertheless, 
glad  to  find  that  he  was  in  Tangier,  and  that  he 
was  to  be  one  of  the  party  to  call  at  the  govern- 
or's palace.  On  learning  of  my  desire  to  visit  the 
prison  Dr.  Field  added  his  petition  to  mine,  and 
I  am  quite  sure  that  Colonel  Mathews  wished  we 
were  both  in  the  United  States. 

We  first  called  upon  the  Sultan's  Minister  of 
Foreign  Affairs,  who  received  us  in  a  little  room 
leading  from  a  pretty  portico  near  the  street  en- 
trance. It  was  furnished,  I  was  pained  to  note, 
not  with  divans  and  rugs,  but  with  a  set  of  red 
plush  and  walnut  sofas  and  chairs,  such  as  you 


TANGIER  6 1 

would  find  in  the  salon  of  a  third-rate  French 
hotel.  The  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs  was  a 
dear,  kindly  old  gentleman,  with  a  fine  white 
beard  down  to  his  waist,  but  he  had  a  cold  in 
his  head,  and  this  kept  him  dabbing  at  his  nose 
with  a  red  bandanna  handkerchief  rolled  up  in  a 
ball,  which  was  not  in  keeping  with  the  rest  of 
his  costume,  nor  with  the  dignity  of  his  appear- 
ance. He  and  Dr.  Field  got  on  very  well ;  they 
found  out  that  they  were  both  seventy  years  of 
age,  and  both  highly  esteemed  in  their  different 
churches.  Indeed,  the  Minister  of  Foreign  Af- 
fairs was  good  enough  to  say,  through  Colonel 
Mathews,  that  Dr.  Field  had  a  good  face,  and 
one  that  showed  he  had  led  a  religious  life.  He 
rather  neglected  me,  and  I  was  out  of  it,  espe- 
cially when  both  the  doctor  and  the  cabinet  min- 
ister began  hoping  that  Allah  would  bless  them 
both.  I  thought  it  most  unorthodox  language 
for  Dr.  Field  to  use. 

We  then  walked  up  the  hill  upon  which  stand 
the  fort,  the  prisons,  the  treasury,  and  the  gov- 
ernor's palace,  and  were  received  at  the  entrance 
to  the  latter  by  the  same  gentlemen  who  had  for 
the  last  two  days  been  enjoying  my  discomfit- 
ure. They  were  now  most  gracious  in  their 
manner,  and  bowed  proudly  and  respectfully  to 
Colonel  Mathews  as  we  passed  between  two  rows 
of  them  and  entered  the  hall  of  the  palace.  We 
went  through  three  halls  covered  with  colored 
tiles  and  topped  with  arches  of  ornamental  scroll- 
work of  intricate  designs.  At  the  extreme  end 


62      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

of  these  rooms  the  Bashaw  stood  waiting  for  us. 
He  was  the  finest-looking  Moor  I  had  seen  ;  and 
I  think  the  Moorish  gentleman,  though  it  seems 
a  strange  thing  to  say,  is  the  most  perfect  type 
of  a  gentleman  that  I  have  seen  in  any  country. 
He  is  seldom  less  than  six  feet  tall,  and  he  car- 
ries his  six  feet  with  the  erectness  of  a  soldier 
and  with  the  grace  of  a  woman.  The  bones  of 
his  face  are  strong  and  well-placed,  and  he  looks 
kind  and  properly  self-respecting,  and  is  always 
courteous.  When  you  add  to  this  clothing  as 
brilliant  and  robes  as  clean  and  soft  and  white  as 
a  bride's,  you  have  a  very  worthy-looking  man. 
The  Bashaw  towered  above  all  of  us.  He  wore 
brown  and  dark-blue  cloaks,  with  a  long  under- 
waistcoat  of  light-blue  silk,  yellow  shoes,  and  a 
white  turban  as  big  as  a  bucket,  and  his  baggy 
trousers  were  as  voluminous  as  Letty  Lind's  di- 
vided skirts.  He  could  not  speak  English,  but 
he  shook  hands  with  us,  which  Moors  do  not  do 
to  one  another,  and  walked  on  ahead  through 
court-yards  and  halls  and  up  stairways  to  a  lit- 
tle room  filled  with  divans  and  decorated  with  a 
carved  ceiling  and  tiled  walls.  There  we  all  sat 
down,  and  a  soldier  in  a  long  red  cloak  and  with 
numerous  swords  sticking  out  of  his  person  gave 
us  tea,  and  sweet  cakes  made  entirely  of  sugar. 
As  soon  as  we  had  finished  one  cup  he  brought  in 
another,  and,  noticing  this,  I  indulged  sparingly ; 
but  the  doctor  finished  his  first,  and  then  refused 
the  rest,  until  the  Consul -General  told  him  he 
must  drink  or  be  guilty  of  a  breach  of  etiquette. 


TANGIER 


A  STREET  DANCER 


The  Bashaw  and 
Colonel  Mathews 
talked  together, 
and  we  paid  the 
governor  long  and 
laborious  compli- 
ments, at  which  he 
smiled  indulgently. 
He  did  not  strike 
me  as  being  at  all 
overcome  by  them; 
he  had,  on  the  con- 
trary, very  much 
the  air  of  a  man 
of  the  world,  and 
seemed  rather  to 
be  bored,  but  too 

polite  to  say  so.  He  looked  exactly  like  Salvini 
as  Othello.  While  the  tea -drinking  was  going 
on  we  were  making  asides  to  Colonel  Mathews, 
and  urging  him  to  propose  our  going  into  the 
prison,  which  he  said  he  would  do,  but  that  it 
must  be  done  diplomatically.  We  told  him  we 
would  give  all  the  prisoners  bread  and  water, 
or  a  lump  sum  to  the  guards,  or  whatever  he 
thought  would  please  the  Bashaw  best.  He 
and  the  Bashaw  then  began  to  talk  about  it, 
and  the  doctor  and  I  looked  consciously  at  the 
ceiling.  The  Bashaw  said  that  never  since  he  had 
been  governor  of  Tangier  had  he  allowed  either 
a  native  or  a  foreigner  to  enter  the  prison ;  and 
that  if  a  European  did  so,  he  would  be  torn  to 


64     THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

pieces  by  the  fanatics  imprisoned  there,  who 
would  think  they  were  pleasing  Allah  by  abusing 
an  unbeliever.  Colonel  Mathews  also  added,  on 
his  own  account,  that  we  would  probably  catch 
some  horrible  disease.  The  more  they  did  not 
want  us  to  go,  the  more  we  wanted  to  go,  the 
doctor  rising  to  the  occasion  with  a  keenness  and 
readiness  of  resource  worthy  of  a  New  York  re- 
porter after  a  beat.  I  can  pay  him  no  higher 
compliment.  After  a  long,  loud,  and  excited  de- 
bate the  Bashaw  submitted,  and  the  Consul-Gen- 
eral  won. 

The  first  prison  they  showed  us  was  the  county 
jail,  in  which  men  are  placed  for  a  month  or  more. 
It  was  dirty  and  uninteresting,  and  we  protested 
that  it  was  not  the  one  which  the  Bashaw  had  de- 
scribed, and  asked  to  be  shown  the  one  where 
the  enemies  of  the  government  were  incarcer- 
ated. Colonel  Mathews  called  back  the  Bashaw's 
soldiers,  and  we  went  on  to  the  larger  prison  im- 
mediately adjoining.  Some  time  ago  the  inmates 
of  this  made  a  break  for  liberty,  and  forced  open 
the  one  door  which  bars  those  inside  from  the 
outer  world.  The  guards  fired  into  the  mass  of 
them,  and  the  place  shows  where  the  bullets 
struck.  To  prevent  a  repetition  of  this,  three 
heavy  bars  were  driven  into  the  masonry  around 
the  door,  so  close  together  that  it  is  impossible 
for  more  than  one  man  to  leave  or  enter  the 
prison  at  one  time  even  when  the  door  is  open. 
And  the  opening  is  so  small  that  to  do  this  he 
must  either  crawl  in  on  his  hands  and  knees,  or 


TANGIER  65 

lift  himself  up  by  the  crossbar  and  swing  himself 
in  feet  foremost.  It  impressed  me  as  a  particu- 
larly embarrassing  way  to  make  an  entrance 
among  a  lot  of  people  who  meditated  tearing 
you  to  pieces.  I  pointed  this  out  to  the  doctor, 
but  he  was  determined,  though  pale.  So  the 
guards  swung  the  door  in,  and  the  first  glimpse 
of  a  Christian  gentleman  the  prisoners  had  in  ten 
years  was  a  pair  of  yellow  riding -boots  which 
shot  into  space,  followed  by  a  young  man,  and  a 
moment  later  by  an  elderly  gentleman  with  a 
white  tie.  We  made  a  combined  movement  to 
the  middle  of  the  prison,  which  was  lighted  from 
above  by  a  square  opening  in  the  roof,  protected 
by  iron  bars.  This  was  the  only  light  in  the 
place.  All  around  the  four  sides  of  the  patio  or 
court  were  rows  of  pillars  supporting  a  portico, 
and  back  of  these  was  a  second  and  outer  corri- 
dor opening  into  the  porticos,  and  so  into  the 
patio.  The  whole  place  —  patio,  porticos,  and 
outer  corridor — was  about  as  big  as  the  stage  of 
a  New  York  theatre.  It  was  paved  with  dirt  and 
broken  slabs,  and  littered  with  straw.  There  was 
no  furniture  of  any  sort.  With  the  exception  of 
the  sink  upon  which  we  stood,  directly  under  the 
opening  in  the  roof,  the  place  was  in  almost  com- 
plete darkness,  although  the  sun  was  shining  brill- 
iantly outside. 

I  think  there  must  have  been  about  fifty  or 

sixty  men  in  the  prison,  and  for  a  short  time  not 

one  of  them  moved.     They  were  apparently,  to 

judge  by  the  way  they  looked  at  us,  as  much 

5 


66      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

startled  as  though  we  had  ascended  from  a  trap 
like  goblins  in  a  pantomime,  and  then  half  of 
them,  with  one  accord,  came  scrambling  towards 
us  on  their  hands  and  knees.  They  were  half 
naked,  and  their  hair  hung  down  over  their  eyes; 
and  this,  and  their  crawling  towards  us  instead  of 
walking,  made  them  look  more  or  less  like  ani- 
mals. As  they  came  forward  there  was  a  clank- 
ing of  chains,  and  I  saw  that  it  was  because  their 
legs  were  fettered  that  they  came  as  they  did, 
and  not  standing  erect  like  human  beings.  The 
guard  who  followed  us  in  was  over  two  minutes 
in  getting  the  door  fastened  behind  him,  and  my 
mind  was  more  occupied  with  this  fact  than  with 
what  I  saw  before  me ;  for  it  seemed  to  me  that 
if  there  was  any  tearing  to  pieces  to  be  gone 
through  with,  I  should  hate  to  have  to  wait  that 
long  while  the  door  was  being  opened  again.  This 
thought,  with  the  shock  of  seeing  thirty  wild  men 
moving  upon  us  out  of  complete  darkness  on 
their  hands  and  knees,  was  the  only  sensation  of 
any  interest  that  I  received  while  visiting  the 
prison. 

The  inmates  looked  exactly  like  the  poorer  of 
the  Moors  outside,  except  that  their  hair  was 
longer  and  their  clothing  was  not  so  white.  There 
was  one  man,  however,  quite  as  well  dressed  as 
any  of  the  Sultan's  counsellors,  and  he  seemed  to 
be  the  only  one  who  objected  to  our  presence. 
The  rest  did  nothing  except  to  gratify  their  curi- 
osity by  staring  at  us ;  they  did  not  even  hold 
out  their  hands  for  money.  They  were  very  dirty 


TANGIER  69 

and  poorly  clothed,  ?nd  their  long  imprisonment 
had  made  them  haggard  and  pale,  and  the  iron 
bars  around  their  legs  gave  them  a  certain  inter- 
est. The  atmosphere  of  the  place  was  horribly 
foul,  but  not  worse  than  the  atmosphere  of  either 
the  men's  or  women's  ward  at  night  in  a  precinct 
station-house  in  New  York  city.  Indeed,  I  was 
not  so  much  impressed  with  the  horrors  of  the 
Sultan's  prison  as  with  the  fact  that  our  own  are 
so  little  better,  considering  our  advanced  civiliza- 
tion. I  do  not  mean  our  large  prisons,  but  the 
cells  and  the  vagrants'  rooms  in  the  police  sta- 
tions. There  the  vagrant  is  given  a  sloping  board 
and  no  ventilation.  In  Tangier  he  is  given  straw 
and  an  opening  in  the  roof.  To  be  fair,  you  must 
compare  a  prisoner's  condition  in  jail  with  that 
which  he  is  accustomed  to  in  his  own  home,  and 
the  homes  of  the  Moors  of  the  lower  class  are  as 
much  like  stables  as  their  stables  are  like  pig- 
sties. The  poor  of  Tangier  are  allowed,  through 
the  kindness  of  the  Sultan,  to  sleep  on  the  bare 
stones  around  the  entrance  to  one  of  the  mosques. 
For  the  poor  sick  there  has  been  built  a  portico, 
about  as  large  as  a  Fifth  Avenue  omnibus,  oppo- 
site this  same  mosque.  This  is  called  the  hospital 
of  Tangier.  It  is  considered  quite  good  enough 
for  sick  people  and  for  those  who  have  no  homes. 
And  every  night  you  will  see  bundles  of  rags  lying 
in  the  open  street  or  under  the  narrow  roof  of  the 
portico,  exposed  to  the  rain  and  to  the  bitter  cold. 
If  this,  in  the  minds  of  the  Moors,  is  fair  treatment 
of  the  sick  and  the  poor,  one  cannot  expect  them 


70     THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

to  give  their  criminals  and  murderers  white  bread 
and  a  freshly  rolled  turban  every  morning. 

If  I  had  seen  horrible  things  in  the  Sultan's 
prison  —  men  starving,  or  too  sick  to  rise,  or 
chained  to  the  walls,  or  half  mad,  or  loathsome 
with  disease — I  should  certainly  have  been  glad 
to  call  the  attention  of  other  people  to  it,  not 
from  any  philanthropic  motives  perhaps,  but  as 
a  matter  of  news  interest.  I  did  not,  however, 
see  any  of  these  things.  Dr.  Field,  I  believe,  was 
differently  impressed,  and  is  of  the  opinion  that 
the  outer  corridor  contained  many  things  much 
too  horrible  to  believe  possible.  He  compared 
this  to  Dante's  ninth  circle  of  hell,  and  made  a 
point  of  the  fact  that  the  guard  had  called  me 
back  when  I  walked  towards  it.  I,  however,  went 
into  it  while  the  doctor  and  the  guard  were  get- 
ting the  door  open  for  us  to  return,  and  saw 
nothing  there  but  straw.  It  seemed  to  me  to  be 
the  place  where  the  men  slept  when  the  rain, 
coming  through  the  opening  in  the  roof,  made  it 
unpleasant  for  them  to  remain  in  the  court. 

It  may  seem  that  my  persistence  in  visiting  the 
prison  is  inconsistent  with  what  I  have  said  of 
foreigners  forcing  themselves  into  places  in  Mo- 
rocco where  they  are  not  wanted,  but  I  am  quite 
sure  that,  had  any  one  heard  the  stories  told  me 
of  the  horror  of  these  jails,  he  would  have  con- 
sidered himself  justified  in  learning  the  truth 
about  them ;  and  I  cannot  understand  why,  if 
the  members  of  the  legations  who  tell  these  sto- 
ries believe  them,  they  have  not  used  their  in- 


TANGIER  71 

fluence  to  try  and  better  the  condition  of  the 
prisoners,  rather  than  to  introduce  game-luus 
for  the  protection  of  partridges  and  wild-boars. 
It  is,  perhaps,  gratifying  to  note  that  the  two 
gentlemen  of  whom  I  spoke  as  having  visited 
the  prison  in  the  last  ten  years  were  the  Ameri- 
can Consul-General  and  another  resident  Ameri- 
can. Both  of  these  contributed  food  to  the  pris- 
oners, and  reported  what  they  had  seen  to  our 
government. 

On  the  whole,  Tangier  impresses  one  as  a  fine 
thing  spoiled  by  civilization.  Barbarism  with 
electric  lights  at  night  is  not  attractive.  Tangier 
to  every  traveller  should  be  chiefly  interesting  as 
a  stepping-stone  towards  Tetuan  or  Fez.  Tetuan 
can  be  reached  in  a  day's  journey,  and  there  the 
Moor  is  to  be  seen  pure  and  simple,  barbarous 
and  beautiful. 


Ill 

FROM  GIBRALTAR  TO  CAIRO 

i HERE  are  certain  places  and  things 
with  which  the  English  novel  has  made 
us  so  familiar  that  it  is  not  necessary 
for  us  to  go  far  afield  or  to  study  guide- 
books in  order  to  feel  that  we  have 
known  them  intimately  and  always.  We  know 
Paddington  Station  as  the  place  where  the  de- 
tective interrogates  the  porter  who  handled  the 
luggage  of  the  escaping  criminal,  and  as  the  spot 
from  which  the  governess  takes  her  ticket  for  the 
country-house  where  she  is  to  be  persecuted  by 
its  mistress  and  loved  by  all  the  masculine  mem- 
bers of  the  household.  We  also  know  that  a  P. 
and  O.  steamer  is  a  means  of  conveyance  almost 
as  generally  used  by  heroes  and  heroines  of  Eng- 
lish fiction  as  a  hansom  cab.  It  is  a  vessel  upon 
which  the  heroine  meets  her  Fate,  either  in  the 
person  of  a  young  man  on  his  way  home  from 
India,  or  by  being  shipwrecked  on  a  desert  island 
on  her  way  to  Australia,  and  where  the  only 
other  surviving  passenger  tattooes  his  will  upon 
her  back,  leaves  her  all  his  fortune,  and  consider- 


FROM   GIBRALTAR   TO  CAIRO  73 

ately  dies.  Long  ago  a  line  of  steamers  ran  to 
the  Peninsula  of  Spain ;  later  they  shortened  their 
sails,  as  the  Romans  shortened  their  swords,  and, 
like  the  Romans,  extended  their  boundaries  to  the 
Orient.  This  line  is  now  an  institution  with  tra- 
ditions and  precedents  and  armorial  bearings  and 
time-hallowed  jokes,  and  when  you  step  upon  the 
deck  of  a  P.  and  O.  steamer  for  the  first  time  you 
feel  that  you  are  not  merely  an  ordinary  passen- 
ger, but  a  part  of  a  novel  in  three  volumes,  or  of 
a  picture  in  the  London  Graphic,  and  that  all  sorts 
of  things  are  imminent  and  possible.  It  may  not 
have  occurred  to  you  before  embarking,  but  you 
know  as  soon  as  you  come  over  the  side  that  you 
expected  to  find  the  deck  strewn  with  laces  and 
fans  and  daggers  from  Tangier,  and  photographs 
of  Gibraltar,  and  such  other  trifles  for  possible 
purchase  by  the  outbound  passengers,  and  that 
the  crew  would  be  little  barefooted  lascars  in  red 
turbans  and  long  blue  shirts,  with  a  cumberband 
about  their  persons,  and  that  you  would  be  called 
to  tiffin  instead  of  to  lunch. 

A  fat  little  lascar  balanced  himself  in  the  jolly- 
boat  outlined  against  the  sky  and  held  aloft  a  red 
flag  until  the  hawser  swung  clear  of  the  propeller, 
when  he  raised  a  white  flag  above  him  and  stood 
as  motionless  as  the  Statue  of  Liberty,  while 
the  Sutlej  cleared  Europa  Point  of  Gibraltar  and 
headed  towards  the  East.  Then  he  pattered 
across  the  deck  and  leaned  over  the  side  and 
crooned  in  a  lazy,  barbarous  monotone  to  the 
waves.  The  sun  fell  upon  the  boat  like  a  spell 


74     THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

and  turned  us  into  sleepy  and  indolent  fixtures 
wherever  it  first  found  us,  and  showed  us  the 
white -capped  peaks  of  the  Sierra  Nevada  of 
Spain  to  the  north,  and  the  dim  blue  mountains 
of  Africa  to  the  south.  The  deck  below  was 
scrubbed  as  white  as  a  bread-board,  and  the  masts 
and  rigging  threw  black  shadows  on  the  awning 
overhead,  and  on  every  side  the  blue  Mediterra- 
nean and  the  bluer  Mediterranean  sky  met  and 
sparkled  and  reflected  each  other's  brilliancy  like 
mirrors  placed  face  to  face. 

For  four  days  the  sun  greeted  the  Sutlej  by 
day  and  the  moon  by  night,  and  the  coast  of 
Africa  played  hide-and-seek  along  her  starboard 
side,  disappearing  in  a  white  mist  of  cloud  for  an 
hour  or  so,  and  then  running  along  with  us  again 
in  comfortable  proximity.  On  the  other  side 
boats  passed  at  almost  as  frequent  intervals,  and 
at  such  friendly  range  that  one  could  count  the 
people  on  the  decks  and  read  their  flag  signals 
without  a  glass.  The  loneliness  of  the  North 
Atlantic,  where  an  iceberg  stands  for  land,  and 
only  an  occasional  tramp  steamer  rests  the  eye,  is 
as  different  to  this  sea  as  a  railroad  journey  over 
the  prairie  is  to  the  jaunt  from  New  York  to 
Washington.  On  the  second  night  out  we  see 
Algiers,  glowing  and  sparkling  in  the  night  like  a 
million  of  fire-flies,  and  with  the  clear  steady  eye 
of  the  light -house  warning  us  away,  as  though 
the  quarantine  had  not  warned  some  of  us  away 
already.  And  on  the  third  night  we  pass  Cape 
Bon,  and  can  imagine  Tunis  lying  tantalizingly 


FROM   GIBRALTAR  TO   CAIRO  75 

near  us,  behind  its  light-house,  shut  off  also  by 
the  quarantine  that  the  cholera  at  Marseilles  has 
made  imperative  wherever  the  French  line  of 
steamers  touch.  By  this  time  the  twoscore  pas- 
sengers have  foregathered  as  they  would  never 
have  done  had  they  all  been  Americans,  or  had 


there  been  three  hundred  of  them,  and  their  place 
of  meeting  the  deck  of  a  transatlantic  steamer 
instead  of  one  of  this   picturesque   fleet,  upon 
which  you  expect  strange  things  to  happen. 
When  an  American  goes  to  sea,  he  reads  books, 


76     THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

or  he  calculates  the  number  of  tons  of  coal  it  is 
taking  to  run  the  vessel  at  that  rate  of  speed,  and 
he  determines  that  rate  of  speed  by  counting  the 
rise  and  fall  of  the  piston-rod,  with  his  watch  in 
his  hand ;  and  when  this  ceases  to  amuse  him  he 
plays  cards  in  the  smoking-room  or  holds  pools 
on  the  run  and  on  the  pilot's  number.  The 
Englishman  joins  in  these  latter  amusements,  be- 
cause nothing  better  offers.  But  when  his  foot 
is  on  his  native  heath  or  on  the  deck  of  one  of 
his  own  vessels,  he  demonstrates  his  preference 
for  that  sort  of  entertainment  which  requires 
exercise  and  little  thought.  If  it  is  at  a  country- 
house,  he  plays  games  which  entail  considerable 
running  about,  and  at  picnics  he  enjoys  "  Throw 
the  handkerchief,"  and  on  board  ship  he  plays 
cricket  and  other  games  dear  to  the  heart  oFthe 
American  at  the  age  of  five.  This  is  partly  be- 
cause he  always  exercises  and  likes  moving  about, 
as  Americans  do  not,  and  because  the  reading  of 
books  (except  such  books  as  Mr.  Potter  of  Texas, 
which,  I  firmly  believe,  every  Englishman  I  ever 
met  has  read,  and  upon  which  they  have  bestowed 
the  most  unqualified  approval  as  the  truest  picture 
of  American  life  and  character  they  have  ever 
found)  entertains  him  for  but  a  very  short  period 
at  a  time. 

So  a  netting  is  placed  about  the  upper  deck 
for  him,  and  he  plays  cricket ;  not  only  he,  but 
his  wife  and  his  sister  and  his  mother  and  the 
unattached  young  ladies  under  the  captain's  care, 
who  are  going  out  to  India,  presumably  to  be  met 


FROM   GIBRALTAR   TO   CAIRO  JJ 

at  the  wharf  by  prospective  husbands.  There  is 
something  most  charming  in  the  absolute  equality 
which  this  sport  entails,  and  the  seriousness  with 
which  the  English  regard  it.  We  could  not  in 
America  expect  a  white-haired  lady  with  specta- 
cles to  bowl  overhand,  or  to  see  that  it  is  consid- 
ered quite  as  a  matter  of  course  that  she  should 
do  it  by  the  member  of  the  last  Oxford  eleven, 
nor  would  our  young  women  be  able  to  hold  a 
hot  ball,  or  to  take  it  with  the  hands  crossed  and 
only  partly  open,  and  not  palm  to  palm  and  wide 
apart.  An  American,  as  a  rule,  walks  in  order 
that  he  may  reach  a  certain  point,  but  the  Eng- 
lishman walks  for  the  sake  of  the  walking.  And 
he  plays  games,  also,  apparently  for  the  exercise 
there  is  in  them ;  games  in  which  people  sit  in  a 
circle  and  discuss  whether  love  or  reason  should 
guide  them  in  going  into  matrimony  do  not  ap- 
peal to  him  so  strongly  as  do  "  Oranges  and  lem- 
ons," or  "Where  are  you,  Jacob?"  which  is  a  very 
fine  game,  in  which  an  early  training  in  sliding  to 
bases  gives  you  a  certain  advantage.  It  is  cer- 
tainly instructive  to  hear  a  captain  who  got  his 
company  through  storming  Fort  Nilt  last  year  in 
the  Pamir  inquire,  anxiously,  "  Oranges  or  lem- 
ons? Yes,  I  know.  But  which  should  I  say,  old 
chap  ?  I'm  a  little  rusty  in  the  game,  you  know." 
If  people  can  get  back  to  the  days  when  they 
were  children  by  playing  games,  or  in  any  other 
way,  no  one  can  blame  them. 

The  island  of  Gozo  rose  up  out  of  the  sea  on 
the  fourth  day  —  a  yellow  rib  of  rock  on   the 


78      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

right,  with  houses  and  temples  on  it  —  and  de- 
monstrated how  few  days  of  water  are  necessary 
to  rob  one's  memory  of  the  usual  look  of  a 
house.  One  would  imagine  by  the  general  in- 
terest in  them  that  we  had  spent  the  last  few 
years  of  our  lives  in  tents,  or  in  the  arctic  re- 
gions under  huts  of  snow  and  ice.  And  then 
the  ship  heads  in  towards  Malta,  and  instead 
of  dropping  anchor  and  waiting  for  a  tender, 
glides  calmly  into  what  is  apparently  its  chief 
thoroughfare.  It  is  like  a  Venice  of  the  sea,  and 
you  feel  as  though  you  were  intruding  in  a  gen- 
tleman's front  yard.  The  houses  and  battlements 
and  ramparts  lie  close  on  either  side,  so  near  that 
one  could  toss  a  biscuit  into  the  hands  oi-~ihe 
Tommies  smoking  on  the  guns,  or  the  natives 
lounging  on  the  steps  that  run  from  the  front 
doors  into  the  sea  itself.  The  yard-arms  reach 
above  the  line  of  the  house-tops,  and  the  bow- 
sprit seems  to  threaten  havoc  with  the  window- 
panes  of  the  custom-house.  We  are  not  appar- 
ently entering  a  harbor,  but  steaming  down  the 
main  street  of  a  city — a  city  of  yellow  limestone, 
with  streets,  walls,  houses,  and  waste  places  all  of 
yellow  limestone.  We  might,  for  all  the  disturb- 
ance we  are  making,  be  moving  forward  in  a  bark 
canoe,  and  not  in  an  ocean  steamer  drawing 
twenty-five  feet  of  water.  And  then  when  the 
anchor  drops,  dozens  of  little  boats,  yellow  and 
green  and  blue,  with  high  posts  at  the  bow  and 
sterns  like  those  on  gondolas,  shoot  out  from  the 
steps,  and  their  owners  clamor  for  the  proud 


STKEKT  OK  SANTA   LUCIA,  MALTA 


FROM   GIBRALTAR   TO   CAIRO  8 1 

privilege  of  carrying  us  over  the  few  feet  of  water 
which  runs  between  the  line  of  houses  and  the 
ship's  sides. 

There  was  at  the  Centennial  Exposition  the 
head  of  a  woman  cut  in  butter,  which  attracted 
much  attention  from  the  rural  visitors.  For  this 
they  passed  by  the  women  painted  on  canvas 
or  carved  in  marble,  they  were  too  like  the  real 
thing,  and  the  countrymen  probably  knew  how 
difficult  it  is  to  make  butter  into  moulds.  For 
some  reason  Malta  reminds  you  of  this  butter 
lady.  It  is  a  real  city — with  real  houses  and  ca- 
thedral and  streets,  no  doubt,  but  you  have  a  feel- 
ing that  they  are  not  genuine,  and  that  though  it 
is  very  cleverly  done,  it  is,  after  all,  a  city  carved 
out  of  cheese  or  butter.  Some  of  the  cheese  is 
mouldy  and  covered  with  green,  and  some  of  the 
walls  have  holes  in  them,  as  has  aerated  bread 
or  Schwcitztrkase,  and  the  streets  and  the  pave- 
ments, and  the  carved  facades  of  the  church- 
es and  opera-house,  and  the  earth  and  the  hills 
beyond  —  everything  upon  which  your  eye  can 
rest  is  glaring  and  yellow,  with  not  a  red  roof  to 
relieve  it ;  it  is  all  just  yellow  limestone,  and  it 
looks  like  Dutch  cheese.  It  is  like  no  other 
place  exactly  that  you  have  ever  seen.  The  ap- 
proach into  the  canal-like  harbor  under  the  guns 
and  the  search -lights  of  the  fortifications,  the 
moats  and  drawbridges,  and  the  glaring  monot- 
ony of  the  place  itself,  which  seems  to  have 
been  cut  out  of  one  piece  and  painted  with  one 
brush,  suggest  those  little  toy  fortresses  of  yel- 
6 


82      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

low  wood  which  appear  in  the  shop  windows  at 
Christmas-time. 

Of  course  the  first  and  last  thought  one  has 
of  Malta  is  that  the  island  was  the  home  of  the 
Order  of  the  Knights  of  St.  John,  or  Knights 
Hospitallers.  This  order,  which  was  the  most 
noble  of  those  of  the  days  of  mediaeval  chivalry, 
was  composed  of  that  band  of  warrior  monks 
who  waged  war  against  the  infidels,  who  kept 
certain  vows,  and  who,  under  the  banner  of 
the  white  cross,  became  honored  and  feared 
throughout  the  then  known  world.  Their  head- 
quarters changed  from  place  to  place  during  the 
four  hundred  years  that  stretched  from  the 
eleventh  century,  when  the  order  was  first  es- 
tablished, up  to  1530,  when  Charles  V.  made 
over  Malta  and  all  its  dependencies  in  perpetual 
sovereignty  to  the  keeping  of  these  Knights. 
They  had  no  sooner  fortified  the  island  than 
there  began  the  nine  months'  siege  of  the  Turks, 
one  of  the  most  memorable  sieges  in  history. 
When  it  was  ended,  the  Turks  re-embarked  ten 
thousand  of  the  forty  thousand  men  they  had 
landed,  and  of  the  nine  thousand  Knights  pres- 
ent under  the  Grand  Master  Jean  de  la  Valette 
when  the  siege  had  opened,  but  six  hundred  ca- 
pable of  bearing  arms  remained  alive. 

The  order  continued  in  possession  of  their 
island  until  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, when  the  French,  under  General  Bonaparte, 
took  it  with  but  little  trouble.  The  French  in 
turn  were  besieged  by  Maltese  and  English,  and 


FROM   GIBRALTAR  TO   CAIRO  83 

after  two  years  capitulated.  In  1814  the  island 
was  transferred  to  England.  It  no\v,  in  its 
monuments  and  its  memories,  speaks  of  the  days 
of  chivalry ;  but  present  and  mixed  with  these  is 
the  ubiquitous  red  coat  of  the  British  soldier; 
and  the  eight-pointed  Maltese  cross,  which  sug- 
gests Ivanhoe,  is  placed  side  by  side  with  the 
lion  and  the  unicorn ;  the  culverin  has  given 
way  to  the  quick-throbbing  Maxim  gun,  the  Tem- 
plar's sword  to  the  Lee-Metford  rifle,  and  the  he- 
roes of  Walter  Scott  to  the  friends  of  Mr.  Rud- 
yard  Kipling. 

The  most  conspicuous  relic  of  the  French  oc- 
cupation is  not  a  noble  one.  It  is  the  penitential 
hood  of  the  Maltese  woman — a  strangely  pictu- 
resque article  of  apparel,  like  a  cowl  or  Shaker 
bonnet,  only  much  larger  than  the  latter,  and  with 
a  cape  which  hangs  over  the  shoulders.  The 
women  hold  the  two  projecting  flaps  of  the  hood 
together  at  the  throat,  and  unless  you  are  advanc- 
ing directly  towards  them,  their  faces  are  quite 
invisible.  The  hoods  and  capes  are  black,  and 
are  worn  as  a  penance  for  the  frailty  of  the  wom- 
en of  Malta  when  the  French  took  the  place  and 
robbed  the  churches,  and  pillaged  the  storehouses 
of  the  Knights,  and  bore  themselves  with  less 
restraint  than  the  infidel  Turks  had  done. 

Malta  retains  a  slight  suggestion  of  mediaeval* 
ism  in  the  garb  of  the  Capuchin  monks,  whose 
tonsured  heads  and  bare  feet  and  roped  waists 
look  like  a  masquerade  in  their  close  proximity  to 
the  young  officers  in  tweeds  and  varnished  boots. 


84  THE   RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

But  one  gets  the  best  idea  of  the  past  from  the 
great  Church  of  St.  John,  which  is  full  of  the  tro- 
phies and  gifts  of  the  Grand  Masters  of  the  Order, 
and  floored  with  two  thousand  marble  tombs  of 
the  Knights  themselves.  Each  Grand  Master 
vied  with  those  who  had  preceded  him  in  enrich- 
ing this  church,  and  each  Knight  on  his  promo- 
tion made  it  a  gift,  so  that  to-day  it  is  rich  in 
these  and  wonderfully  beautiful.  This  is  the 
chief  show-place,  and  the  Governor's  palace  is  an- 
other, and,  to  descend  from  the  sublimity  of  the 
past  to  the  absurdity  of  the  present,  so  is  also 
the  guard-room  of  the  officer  of  the  day,  which 
generations  of  English  subalterns  have  helped  to 
decorate.  Each  year  a  committee  of  officers  go 
over  the  pictures  on  its  walls  and  rub  out  the 
least  amusing,  and  this  survival  of  the  fittest  has 
resulted  in  a  most  entertaining  gallery  of  black 
and  white. 

The  Order  of  Jerusalem,  or  of  St.  John,  still 
obtains  in  Europe,  and  those  who  can  show  four- 
teen quarterings  on  one  side  and  twelve  on  the 
other  are  entitled  to  belong  to  it;  but  they  are 
carpet  knights,  and  wearing  an  enamel  Maltese 
cross  on  the  left  side  of  an  evening  coat  is  a  dif- 
ferent thing  from  carrying  it  on  a  shield  for  Sar- 
acens to  hack  at. 

Sicily  showed  itself  for  a  few  hours  while  the 
boat  continued  on  its  way  to  Brindisi ;  and  as 
that  day  happened  to  be  the  4th  of  March,  the 
captain  of  the  Sutlej  was  asked  to  make  a  calcu- 
lation for  which  there  will  be  no  further  need  for 


FROM   GIBRALTAR  TO  CAIRO  87 

four  years  to  come.  This  calculation  showed  at 
what  point  in  the  Mediterranean  ocean  the  Sut- 
lej  would  be  when  a  President  was  being  inaugu- 
rated in  Washington,  and  at  the  proper  time  the 
passengers  were  invited  to  the  cabin,  and  the  fact 
that  a  government  was  changing  into  the  hands 
of  one  who  could  best  take  care  of  it  was  im- 
pressed upon  them  in  different  ways.  And  later, 
after  dinner,  the  captain  of  the  Sutlcj  made  a 
speech,  and  said  things ,  about  the  important 
event  (which  he  insisted  on  calling  an  election) 
which  was  then  taking  place  in  America,  and  the 
English  cheered  and  drank  the  new  President's 
health,  and  the  two  Americans  on  board,  who 
fortunately  were  both  good  Democrats,  felt  not 
so  far  from  home  as  before. 

You  must  touch  at  Brindisi,  which  is  situated 
on  the  heel  of  the  boot  of  Italy,  if  you  wish  to  go 
a  part  of  the  way  by  land  from  the  East  to  Lon- 
don or  from  London  to  the  East.  And  as  many 
people  prefer  travelling  forty-eight  hours  across 
the  Continent  to  rounding  Gibraltar,  one  hears 
often  of  Brindisi,  and  pictures  it  as  a  shipping 
port  of  the  importance  of  Liverpool  or  Marseilles. 
Instead  of  which  it  is  as  desolate  as  a  summer 
resort  in  midwinter,  and  is  like  that  throughout 
the  year.  There  was  a  long,  broad  stone  wharf, 
and  tall  stucco  houses  behind,  and  banks  of  coal 
which  suggested  the  rear  approach  to  Long  Isl- 
and City,  and  the  soft  blue  Italian  skies  of  which 
we  had  read  were  steely  blue,  and  most  of  us 
wore  overcoats.  We  lay  bound  fast  to  the  wluirt, 


88      THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

with  a  plank  thrown  from  the  boat's  side  to  the 
quay,  for  the  day,  and  we  had  free  permission  to 
learn  to  walk  on  streets  again  for  full  twenty-four 
hours;  but  after  facing  the  wind,  and  dodging 
guides  who  had  nothing  to  show,  we  came  back 
by  preference  to  the  clean  deck  and  the  steamer- 
chair.  Desperate -looking  Italian  soldiers  with 
feathers  in  their  hats,  and  custom-house  officers, 
and  gendarmes  paraded  up  and  down  the  quay 
for  our  delectation,  and  a  wicked  little  boy  stood 
on  the  pier- head  and  sang  "  Ta-ra-ra-boom-chi- 
ay,"  pointedly  varying  this  knowledge  of  our  sev- 
eral nationalities  by  crying :  "  I  say,  buy  box 
matches.  Get  out."  This  show  of  learning 
caused  him  to  be  regarded  by  his  fellows  with 
much  envy,  and  they  watched  us  to  see  how  far 
we  were  impressed. 

There  are  two  things  which  need  no  newspaper 
advertising  and  which  recognize  no  geographical 
lines ;  one  is  a  pretty  face  and  the  other  is  a  good 
song.  I  have  seen  photographs  for  sale  of  Isa- 
belle  Irving  and  Lillian  Russell  in  as  different  lo- 
calities as  Santiago  in  Cuba,  and  Rotterdam,  and 
I  saw  a  play -bill  in  San  Antonio,  Texas,  upon 
which  the  Countess  Dudley  and  the  Duchess  of 
Leinster  were  reproduced  under  the  names  of  the 
Walsh  Sisters.  A  good  song  will  travel  as  far, 
changing  its  name,  too,  perhaps,  and  its  words, 
but  keeping  the  same  melody  that  has  pleased 
people  in  a  different  part  of  the  world.  When 
the  moon  came  out  at  Brindisi  and  hid  the  heaps 
of  coal,  and  showed  only  the  white  houses  and 


ni.LAK    OF    (..l.s.VK    AT    BK1NUIS1 


FROM   GIBRALTAR   TO  CAIRO  91 

the  pillar  of  Caesar,  a  party  of  young  men  with 
guitars  and  mandolins  gathered  under  the  bow 
and  sang  a  song  called  "  Oh,  Caroline,"  which  I 
had  last  heard  Francis  Wilson  sing  as  a  part  of 
the  score  of  "The  Lion-tamer,"  to  very  different 
words.  As  the  scene  of  "The  Lion -tamer"  is 
laid  in  Sicily,  the  song  was  more  or  less  in  place; 
but  the  contrast  between  the  dark-bro\ved  Italian 
and  Mr.  Wilson's  genial  countenance  which  the 
song  brought  back  was  striking.  And  on  the 
night  after  we  had  left  Brindisi,  when  the  crew 
gave  a  concert,  one  of  them  sang  "  Oh,  promise 
me,"  and  some  one  asked  if  the  song  had  yet 
reached  America.  I  did  not  undeceive  him,  but 
said  it  had. 

After  Brindisi  the  hands  of  the  clock  go  back 
a  few  thousand  years,  and  we  see  Cethdonia, 
where  Ulysses  owned  much  property,  and  Crete, 
from  whence  St.  Paul  set  sail,  with  its  long  range 
of  mountains  covered  with  snow,  and  then  we 
come  back  to  the  present  near  the  island  of 
Zante,  where  the  earthquake  moved  a  month  ago 
and  swallowed  up  the  homes  of  the  people. 

The  Sutlej  had  been  going  out  of  her  course 
all  of  the  fourth  day  in  order  to  dodge  possible 
islands  thrown  up  by  the  earthquake,  and  she 
was  late.  That  night,  as  she  steamed  forward  at 
her  best  speed,  the  level  oily  sea  fell  back  from 
her  bows  with  a  steady  ripple  as  she  cut  it  in  two 
and  turned  it  back  out  of  the  way.  A  light  on 
the  horizon,  like  a  policeman's  lantern,  which 
changed  to  the  burnt -out  end  of  a  match  and 


92     THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

back  again  to  a  bull's-eye,  told  us  that  beyond 
the  light  lay  the  level  sands  of  Egypt,  almost  as 
far-reaching  and  monotonous  as  the  sea  that 
touched  its  shore. 

The  force  of  habit  is  very  strong  on  many  peo- 
ple, and  if  they  approach  the  land  of  the  Pha- 
raohs and  of  Cleopatra  an  hour  after  their  usual 
bedtime,  they  feel  no  inclination  to  diverge  from 
their  usual  habits  on  that  account.  When  you 
consider  how  many  hours  there  are  for  slumber, 
and  how  many  are  given  to  dances,  you  would 
think  one  hour  of  sleep  might  be  spared  out  of  a 
lifetime  in  order  that  you  could  see  Port  Said  at 
night.  There  was  a  long  line  of  lamps  on  the 
shore,  like  a  gigantic  row  of  footlights  or  a  prai- 
rie fire  along  the  horizon,  and  we  passed  towards 
this  through  buoys  with  red  and  green  lights, 
with  a  long  sea-wall  reaching  out  on  one  side, 
and  the  natural  reef  of  jagged  rocks  rising  black 
out  of  the  sea  in  the  path  of  the  moon  on  the 
other.  Then  black  boats  shot  out  from  the  shore 
and  assailed  us  with  strange  cries,  and  men  in 
turbans  and  long  robes,  and  negroes  in  what 
looked  like  sacking,  and  which  probably  was  sack- 
ing, but  which  could  not  hide  the  suppleness  and 
strength  of  their  limbs,  climbed  up  over  the  high 
sides.  These  were  the  coal-trimmers  making  way 
for  the  black  islands,  filled  with  black  coal  and 
blacker  men,  who  made  fast  to  the  side  and  be- 
gan feeding  the  vessel  through  a  blazing  hole  like 
an  open  fireplace  in  her  iron  side.  Four  braziers 
filled  with  soft  coal  burnt  with  a  fierce  red  flame 


APPROACH  TO   ISMAlLIA   BY  THE  SUEZ  CANAL 


FROM   GIBRALTAR   TO   CAIRO  95 

from  the  corners  of  the  barges,  and  in  this  light 
from  out  of  the  depths  half- naked  negroes  ran 
shrieking  and  crying  with  baskets  of  coal  on  their 
shoulders  to  the  top  of  an  inclined  plank,  and 
stood  there  for  a  second  in  the  full  glare  of  the 
opening  until  one  could  see  the  whites  of  their 
eyes  and  the  sweat  glistening  on  the  black  faces. 
Then  they  pitched  the  coal  forward  into  the 
lighted  opening,  as  though  they  were  feeding  a 
fire,  and  disappeared  with  a  jump  downward  into 
the  pit  of  blackness.  The  coal  dust  rose  in  great 
curtains  of  mist,  through  which  the  figures  of  the 
men  and  the  red  light  showed  dimly  and  with 
wavering  outline,  like  shadows  in  an  iron -mill, 
and  through  it  all  came  their  cries  and  shouts, 
and  the  roar  of  the  coal  blocks  as  they  rattled 
down  into  the  hold. 

Port  Said  occupies  the  same  position  to  the 
waters  of  the  world  as  Dodge  City  once  did  to  the 
Western  States  of  America  —  it  is  the  meeting- 
place  of  vessels  from  every  land  over  every  water, 
just  as  Dodge  City  was  the  meeting-place  of  the 
great  trails  across  the  prairies.  When  a  cowboy 
reached  Dodge  City  after  six  months  of  constant 
riding  by  day  and  of  sleeping  under  the  stars  by 
night,  and  with  wild  steers  for  company,  he  want- 
ed wickedness  in  its  worst  form — such  being  the 
perversity  of  man.  And  you  are  told  that  Port 
Said  offers  to  travellers  and  crew  the  same  attrac- 
tive features  after  a  month  or  weeks  of  rough 
voyaging  that  Dodge  City  once  offered  to  the 
trailsmen.  In  The  Light  that  Failed  we  are  told 


g6     THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

that  Port  Said  is  the  wickedest  place  on  earth, 
that  it  is  a  sink  of  iniquity  and  a  hole  of  vice,  and 
a  wild  night  in  Port  Said  is  described  there  with 
pitiless  detail.  Almost  every  young  man  who 
leaves  home  for  the  East  is  instructed  by  his 
friends  to  reproduce  that  night,  or  never  return  to 
civilization.  And  every  sea-captain  or  traveller 
or  ex -member  of  the  Army  of  Occupation  in 
Egypt  that  I  met  on  this  visit  to  the  East  either 
smiled  darkly  when  he  spoke  of  Port  Said  or  raised 
his  eyes  in  horror.  They  all  agreed  on  two  things 
— that  it  was  the  home  of  the  most  beautiful  wom- 
an on  earth,  which  is  saying  a  good  deal,  and  that 
it  was  the  wickedest,  wildest,  and  most  vicious 
place  that  man  had  created  and  God  forgotten. 
One  would  naturally  buy  pocket-knives  at  Shef- 
field, and  ginger  ale  in  Belfast,  and  would  not  lay 
in  a  stock  of  cigars  if  going  to  Havana ;  and  so 
when  guides  in  Continental  cities  and  in  the  East 
have  invited  me  to  see  and  to  buy  strange  things 
which  caused  me  to  doubt  the  morals  of  those 
who  had  gone  before,  I  have  always  put  them 
off,  because  I  knew  that  some  day  I  should  visit 
Port  Said.  I  did  not  want  second-best  and  imi- 
tation wickedness,  but  the  most  awful  wickedness 
of  the  entire  world  sounded  as  though  it  might 
prove  most  amusing.  I  expected  a  place  blazing 
with  lights,  and  with  gambling-houses  and  cafes 
cJiantants  open  to  the  air,  and  sailors  fighting 
with  bare  knives,  and  guides  who  cheated  and 
robbed  you,  or  led  you  to  dives  where  you  could 
be  drugged  and  robbed  by  others. 


FROM    GIBRALTAR   TO   CAIRO  99 

So  I  went  on  shore  and  gathered  the  guides 
together,  and  told  them  for  the  time  being  to 
sink  their  rivalry  and  to  join  with  loyal  local 
pride  in  showing  me  the  worst  Port  Said  could 
do.  They  consulted  for  some  time,  and  then 
said  that  they  were  sorry,  but  the  only  gambling- 
house  in  the  place  closed  at  twelve,  and  so  did 
the  only  cafe  chantant ;  and  as  it  was  now  nearly 
half-past  twelve,  every  one  was  properly  in  bed. 
I  expressed  myself  fully,  and  they  were  hurt,  and 
said  that  Egypt  was  a  great  country,  and  that 
after  I  had  seen  Cairo  I  would  say  so.  So  I  told 
them  I  had  not  meant  to  offend  their  pride  of 
country,  and  that  I  was  going  to  Cairo  in  order 
to  see  things  almost  as  old  as  wickedness,  and 
much  more  worth  while,  and  that  all  I  asked  of 
Port  Said  was  that  it  should  live  up  to  its  name. 
I  told  them  to  hire  a  house,  and  wake  the  people 
in  Port  Said  up,  and  show  me  the  very  worst, 
lowest,  wickedest,  and  most  vicious  sights  of 
which  their  city  boasted ;  that  I  would  give  them 
four  hours  in  which  to  do  it,  and  what  money 
they  needed.  I  should  like  to  print  what,  after 
long  consultation,  the  five  guides  of  Port  Said— 
which  is  a  place  a  half-mile  across,  and  with  which 
they  were  naturally  acquainted — offered  me  as 
the  acme  of  riotous  dissipation.  I  do  not  do  so, 
not  because  it  would  bring  the  blush  to  the  check 
of  the  reader,  but  to  the  inhabitants  of  Port  Said, 
who  have  enjoyed  a  notoriety  they  do  not  de- 
serve, and  who  are  like  those  desperadoes  in  the 
West  who  would  rather  be  considered  "  bad " 


100          THE    RULERS   OF    THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

than  the  nonentities  that  they  are.  I  bought  pho- 
tographs, a  box  of  cigarettes,  and  a  cup  of  black 
coffee  at  Port  Said.  That  cannot  be  considered 
a  night  of  wild  dissipation.  Port  Said  may  have 
been  a  sink  of  iniquity  when  Mr.  Kipling  was 
last  there,  but  when  I  visited  it  it  was  a  coaling 
station.  I  would  hate  to  be  called  a  coaling 
station  if  I  were  Port  Said,  even  by  me. 

When  I  awoke  after  my  night  of  riot  at  Port 
Said  the  Sutlej  was  steaming  slowly  down  the 
Suez  Canal,  and  its  waters  rippled  against  its 
sandy  banks  and  sent  up  strange  odors  of  fish 
and  mud.  On  either  side  stretched  long  levels 
of  yellow  sand  dotted  with  bunches  of  dark  green 
grass,  like  tufts  on  a  quilt,  over  which  stalked  an 
occasional  camel,  bending  and  rocking,  and  scorn- 
ing the  rival  ship  at  its  side.  You  have  heard  so 
much  of  the  Suez  Canal  as  an  engineering  feat 
that  you  rather  expect,  in  your  ignorance,  to  find 
the  banks  upheld  by  walls  of  masonry,  and  to 
pass  through  intricate  locks  from  one  level  to  an- 
other, or  at  least  to  see  a  well-beaten  towpath  at 
its  side.  But  with  the  exception  of  dikes  here 
and  there,  you  pass  between  slipping  sandy  banks, 
which  show  less  of  the  hand  of  man  than  does  a 
mill-dam  at  home,  and  you  begin  to  think  that 
Ferdinand  de  Lesseps  drew  his  walking-stick 
through  the  sand  from  the  Red  Sea  to  the  Medi- 
terranean, and  twenty  thousand  negroes  followed 
him  and  dug  a  ditch.  On  either  side  of  this  ditch 
you  see  reproduced  in  real  life  the  big  colored 
prints  which  hung  on  the  walls  of  the  Sunday- 


FROM  GIBRALTAR  TO  CAIRO          IOI 

school.  There  are  the  buffaloes  drawing  the 
ploughs  of  wood,  and  the  wells  of  raw  sun-baked 
clay,  and  the  ditches  and  water -works  of  two 
cog-wheels  and  clay  pots  for  irrigating  the  land, 
and  the  strings  of  camels,  and  the  veiled  women 
carrying  earthen  jars  on  the  left  shoulder.  And 
beyond  these  stretches  the  yellow  sand,  not  white 
and  heavy,  like  our  own,  but  dun  -  colored  and 
fine,  like  dust,  and  over  it  amethyst  skies  bare  of 
clouds,  and  tall  palms.  And  then  the  boat  stops 
again  at  Isma'ilia  to  let  you  off  for  Cairo,  and  the 
brave  captains  returning  from  leave,  and  the 
braver  young  women  who  are  going  out  to  work 
in  hospitals,  and  the  young  wives  with  babies 
whom  their  fathers  have  not  seen,  and  the  com- 
missioners returning  to  rule  and  bully  a  native 
prince,  pass  on  to  India,  and  you  are  assaulted 
by  donkey- boys  who  want  you  to  ride  "Mark 
Twain,"  or  "Lady  Dunlo,"  or  "  Two-Pair-of- 
Black  -  Eyes  -  Oh  -What  -  a  -  Surprise  -  Grand  -  Ole- 
Man."  A  jerky,  rumbling  train  carries  you  from 
Isma'ilia  past  Tel-el- Kebir  station,  where  the 
British  army  surprised  the  enemy  by  a  night 
march  and  took  a  train  back  to  Cairo  in  three 
hours.  And  then,  after  a  five  hours'  ride,  you 
stop  at  Cairo,  and  this  chapter  ends. 


IV 


CAIRO  AS  A  SHOW-  PLACE 

a  rule,  when  you  visit  the  capital  of 
a  country  for  the  first  time  it  is  suf- 
ficient that  you  should  have  studied 
the  history  of  that  particular  coun- 
try in  order  that  you  may  properly 
appreciate  the  monuments  and  the  show-places 
of  its  chief  cities  ;  it  is  not  necessary  that  you 
should  be  an  authority  on  the  history  of  Norway 
and  Sweden  to  understand  Paris  or  New  York. 
For  a  full  appreciation  of  most  of  the  great  cities 
of  the  world  one  finds  a  single  red-bound  volume 
of  Baedeker  to  be  all-sufficient;  but  when  you  go 
to  Cairo,  in  order  that  you  may  understand  all 
that  lies  spread  out  for  your  pleasure,  you  should 
first  have  mastered  the  Old  and  the  New  Testa- 
ment, a  complete  history  of  the  world,  several  of 
Shakespeare's  plays,  and  the  files  of  the  London 
Times  for  the  past  ten  years.  Almost  every 
man  who  was  great,  not  only  in  the  annals  of  his 
own  country,  but  in  the  history  of  the  world,  has 
left  his  mark  on  this  oldest  country  of  Egypt,  as 
tourists  to  the  Colosseum  have  scratched  their 


CAIRO  AS   A   SHOW-PLACE  103 

initials  on  its  stones,  and  so  hope  for  immortality. 
You  are  shown  in  Cairo  the  monuments  of  great 
monarchs  and  of  a  great  people,  who  were  not 
known  beyond  the  limits  of  their  own  country  in 
contemporaneous  history  only  because  there  was 
no  contemporaneous  history,  and  of  those  who 
came  thousands  of  years  later.  The  isle  of  Rod- 
da,  between  the  two  banks  of  the  Nile  at  Cairo, 
marks  where  Moses  was  found  in  the  bulrushes ; 
a  church  covers  the  stones  upon  which  Mary  and 
Joseph  rested ;  in  the  city  of  Alexandria  is  the 
spot  where  Alexander  the  Great  scratched  his 
name  upon  the  sands  of  Egypt ;  the  mouldering 
walls  of  Old  Cairo  are  the  souvenirs  of  Caesar,  as 
are  the  monuments  upon  which  the  Egyptians 
carved  his  name  with  "Autocrator"  after  it.  At 
Actium  and  Alexandria  you  think  of  Antony 
and  of  the  two  women,  so  widely  opposed  and 
so  differently  beautiful,  whom  Sarah  Bernhardt 
and  Julia  Neilson  re-embody  to-day  in  Paris  and 
in  London,  and  to  whom  Shakespeare  and  Kings- 
ley  haye  paid  tribute.  Mansoorah  marks  the 
capture  of  Saint-Louis  of  France,  and  the  cres- 
cent and  star  which  is  floating  over  Cairo  at  this 
minute  speak  of  Osman  Sultan  Selim  I.,  with 
whom  began  the  dependence  of  Egypt  as  a  part 
of  the  Ottoman  Empire.  From  there  you  see 
the  windmills  and  bake-ovens  of  Napoleon,  which 
latter,  stretching  for  miles  across  the  desert,  mark 
the  march  of  his  army.  Abukir  speaks  of  Nel- 
son and  the  battle  of  the  Nile ;  and  after  him 
come  the  less  momentous  names  Tel-el-Kebir 


104          THE   RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

and  "  England's  Only  General,"  Wolseley,  and 
the  fall  of  Khartoom  and  the  loss  of  Gordon. 
The  history  of  Egypt  is  the  history  of  the  Old 
World. 

Moses,  Rameses  II.,  Darius,  Alexander,  Caesar, 
Napoleon,  Mehemet  Ali,  and  Nelson — these  are 
all  good  names ;  and  yet  what  they  failed  to  do 
is  apparently  being  done  to-day  by  an  Army  of 
Occupation  without  force,  but  with  the  show  of 
it  only :  not  by  a  single  great  military  hero,  but 
by  a  lot  of  men  in  tweed  suits  who  during  busi- 
ness hours  irrigate  land  and  add  up  columns  of 
irritating  figures,  and  in  their  leisure  moments 
solemnly  play  golf  at  the  very  base  of  the  pyra- 
mids. The  best  of  Cairo  lies,  of  course,  in  that 
which  is  old,  and  not  in  what  has  been  imported 
from  the  New  World,  and  its  most  amusing  feat- 
ures are  the  incongruities  which  these  importa- 
tions make  possible.  I  am  speaking  of  Cairo  now 
from  a  tourist's  point  of  view,  and  not  from  that 
of  a  political  economist.  He  would  probably  be 
interested  in  the  improved  sanitation  and  the 
Mixed  Tribunal. 

I  had  pictured  Cairo  as  an  Oriental  city  of 
much  color,  with  beautiful  minarets  piercing  the 
sky-line,  and  with  much  richness  of  decoration 
on  the  outside  of  its  palaces  and  mosques.  Cairo 
is  divided  into  two  parts,  that  which  is  old  and 
decaying  and  that  which  is  European  and  modern; 
the  prevailing  colors  of  both  are  gray,  a  dull 
yellow,  and  white.  The  mosques  are  of  gray 
stone,  the  houses  of  dirty  white,  and  in  the  new 


CAIRO   AS   A   SHOW-PLACE  105 

part  the  palaces  and  residences  remind  one  of 
white  Italian  villas.  These  are  surrounded  by 
tropical  gardens,  which  alone  save  the  city  from 
one  monotonous  variation  of  sombre  colors.  It 
is  not,  therefore,  the  buildings,  either  new  or 


BAZAR   OF  A  WORKER   IN   BRASS 


old,  which  make  Cairo  one  of  the  most  pictu- 
resque and  incongruous  and  entertaining  of  cities 
in  the  whole  world ;  it  is  the  people  who  live  in 
it  and  who  move  about  in  it,  and  who  are  so 


106          THE   RULERS   OF  THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

constantly  in  the  streets  that  from  the  Citadel 
above  the  city  its  roar  comes  to  you  like  the  roar 
of  London.  In  that  city  it  is  the  voice  of  traf- 
fic and  steam  and  manufactures,  but  in  Cairo  it 
emanates  from  the  people  themselves,  who  talk 
and  pray  and  shout  and  live  their  lives  out-of- 
doors.  These  people  are  the  natives,  the  Euro- 
pean residents,  the  Army  of  Occupation,  and, 
during  the  winter  months,  the  tourists.  When 
you  say  natives  you  include  Egyptians,  Arabians, 
Copts,  Syrians,  negroes  from  the  Upper  Nile, 
and  about  a  hundred  other  subdivisions,  which 
embrace  every  known  nationality  of  the  East. 

Mixed  with  these  are  the  residents,  chiefly 
Greek  and  French  and  Turks,  and  the  Army  of 
Occupation,  who,  when  they  are  not  in  beautiful 
uniforms,  are  in  effective  riding-clothes,  and  their 
wives  and  sisters  in  men's  shirts  and  straw  hats 
or  Karkee  riding-habits.  The  tourists,  for  their 
part,  wear  detective  cameras  and  ready-made  ties 
if  they  are  Americans,  and  white  helmets  and 
pugarees  floating  over  their  necks  and  white  um- 
brellas if  they  are  English.  This  latter  tropical 
outfit  is  spoiled  somewhat  by  the  fact  that  they 
are  forced  to  wear  overcoats  the  greater  part  of 
the  time ;  but  as  they  always  take  the  overcoats 
off  when  they  are  being  photographed  at  the 
base  of  the  pyramids,  their  envious  friends  at 
home  imagine  they  are  in  a  warm  climate. 

The  longer  you  remain  in  Cairo  the  more  sat- 
isfying it  becomes,  as  you  find  how  uninterrupt- 
edly the  old,  old  life  of  the  people  is  going  on 


CAIRO   AS  A   SHOW-PLACE  107 

about  you,  and  as  you  discover  for  yourself  bazars 
and  mosques  and  tiny  workshops  and  open  cafes  of 
which  the  guide-books  say  nothing,  and  to  which 
there  are  no  guides.  You  can  see  all  the  show- 
places  in  Cairo  of  which  you  have  read  in  a  week, 
and  yet  at  the  end  of  the  week  you  feel  as  though 
what  you  had  seen  was  not  really  the  city,  but  just 
the  goods  in  the  shop-window.  So  keep  away 
from  show-places.  Lose  yourself  in  the  streets, 
or  sit  idly  on  the  terrace  of  your  hotel  and  watch 
the  show  move  by,  feeling  that  the  best  of  it, 
after  all,  lies  in  the  fact  that  nothing  you  see  is 
done  for  show ;  that  it  is  all  natural  to  the  people 
or  the  place ;  that  if  they  make  pictures  of  them- 
selves, they  do  so  unconsciously ;  and  that  no 
one  is  posing  except  the  tourist  in  his  pith  hel- 
met. 

The  bazars  in  Cairo  cover  much  ground,  and 
run  in  cliques  according  to  the  nature  of  the 
goods  they  expose  for  sale.  From  a  narrow 
avenue  of  red  and  yellow  leather  shoes  you  come 
to  another  lane  of  rugs  and  curtains  and  cloth, 
and  through  this  to  an  alley  of  brass — brass 
lamps  and  brass  pots  and  brass  table-tops — and 
so  on  into  groups  of  bookbinders,  and  of  armor- 
ers, and  sellers  of  perfumes.  These  lanes  are 
unpaved,  and  only  wide  enough  at  places  for 
two  men  to  push  past  at  one  time ;  at  the  widest 
an  open  carriage  can  just  make  its  way  slowly, 
and  only  at  the  risk  of  the  driver's  falling  off  his 
box  in  a  paroxysm  of  rage.  The  houses  and 
shops  that  overhang  these  filthy  streets  are  as 


Io8          THE   RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

primitive  and  old  as  the  mud  in  which  you  tramp, 
but  they  are  fantastically  and  unceasingly  beau- 
tiful. On  the  level  of  the  street  is  the  bazar — a 
little  box  with  a  show-case  at  one  side,  and  at 
the  back  an  oven,  or  a  forge,  or  a  loom,  accord- 
ing to  the  nature  of  the  thing  which  is  being 
made  before  your  eyes.  Goldsmiths  beat  and 
blow  on  the  raw  metal  as  you  stand  at  their 
elbow ;  bakers  knead  their  bread ;  laundrymen 
squirt  water  over  the  soiled  linen;  armorers  ham- 
mer on  a  spear-head,  which  is  afterwards  to  be 
dug  up  and  sold  as  an  assegai  from  the  Soudan ; 
and  the  bookbinders  to  the  Khedive  paste  and 
tool  the  leather  boxes  for  his  Highness  with  the 
dust  from  the  street  covering  them  and  their 
work,  with  two  dogs  fighting  for  garbage  at  their 
feet,  and  the  uproar  of  thousands  of  people  ring- 
ing in  their  ears.  The  Oriental  cannot  express 
himself  in  the  street  without  shouting.  Every- 
body shouts — donkey-boys  and  drivers,  venders 
of  a  hundred  trifles,  police  and  storekeepers,  auc- 
tioneers and  beggars.  They  do  not  shout  oc- 
casionally, but  continually.  They  have  to  shout, 
or  they  will  either  trample  on  some  one  or  some 
one  will  as  certainly  trample  on  them.  Camels 
and  donkeys  and  open  carriages  and  mounted 
police  move  through  the  torrent  of  pedestrians 
as  though  they  were  figures  of  the  imagination, 
and  had  no  feelings  or  feet.  On  the  second  story 
over  each  bazar  is  the  home  of  its  owner.  The 
windows  of  this  story  are  latticed,  and  bulge  for- 
ward so  that  the  women  of  the  harem  may  look 


CAIRO   AS   A   SHOW-PLACE  1 1  I 

down  without  being  themselves  seen.  Above 
these  are  square,  heavy  balconies  of  carved  open 
wood-work,  very  old  and  very  beautiful.  Scat- 
tered through  the  labyrinth  of  the  bazars  are  the 
mosques,  with  wide,  dirty  steps  covered  with  the 
red  and  yellow  shoes  of  the  worshippers  within, 
and  with  high  minarets,  and  facades  carved  in 
relief  with  sentences  from  the  Koran,  or  with 
the  name  of  the  Sultan  to  whom  the  temple  is 
dedicated. 

The  bazars  are  very  much  as  one  imagines  they 
should  be,  the  fact  that  impresses  you  most 
about  them  being,  I  think,  that  such  beautiful 
things  should  come  from  such  queer  little  holes 
of  dirt  and  poverty,  and  that  you  should  stand 
ankle-deep  in  mud  while  you  are  handling  tur- 
quoises and  gold  filigree-work  as  delicate  as  that 
of  Regent  Street  or  Broadway.  At  the  bazars 
to  which  the  dragomen  take  tourists  you  will  be 
invited  to  sit  down  on  a  cushion  and  to  drink 
coffee  and  smoke  cigarettes,  but  you  will  pay,  if 
you  purchase  anything,  about  a  pound  for  each 
cup  of  coffee  you  take.  The  best  bazars  for  bar- 
gains are  those  in  Old  Cairo,  to  which  you  should 
go  alone.  In  either  place  it  is  the  rule  to  offer 
one-third  of  what  you  are  asked — as  I  found  it 
was  not  the  rule  to  do  in  Tangier — and  it  is  not 
always  safe  to  offer  a  third  unless  you  want  the 
article  very  much,  as  you  will  certainly  get  it  at 
that  price.  You  feel  much  more  at  home  in  the 
bazars  and  the  cafes  and  in  all  of  the  out-of-door 
life  of  Cairo  than  in  that  of  Tangier,  owing  to 


112  THE    RULERS    OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

the  good -nature  of  the  Egyptian.  The  Moor 
resents  your  presence,  and  though  that  in  itself 
is  attractive,  the  absolute  courtesy  of  the  Egyp- 
tian, when  it  is  not,  as  it  seldom  is,  servility,  has 
also  its  advantage.  If  you  raised  your  stick  to 
a  Moorish  donkey-boy,  for  instance,  you  would 
undoubtedly  have  as  much  rough-and-tumble 
fighting  as  you  could  attend  to  at  one  time ; 
but  you  have  to  beat  an  Egyptian  donkey-boy,  or 
strike  at  him,  or  a  dozen  of  him,  if  you  want 
peace,  and  every  time  you  hit  him  he  comes  up 
smiling,  and  with  renewed  assurances  that  the 
Flying  Dutchman  is  a  very  good  donkey,  and 
that  all  the  other  donkeys  are  "  velly  sick." 
There  is  nothing  so  inspiring  as  the  sight  of  a 
carefully  bred  American  girl,  who  would  feel 
remorse  if  she  scolded  her  maid,  beating  eight  or 
nine  donkey- boys  with  her  umbrella,  until  she 
breaks  it,  and  so  rides  off  breathless  but  tri- 
umphant. This  shows  that  necessity  knows  no 
laws  of  social  behavior. 

When  you  are  weary  of  fighting  your  way 
through  the  noise  and  movement  of  the  bazars, 
you  can  find  equal  entertainment  on  the  terrace 
of  your  hotel.  There  are  several  hotels  in  Cairo. 
There  is  one  to  which  you  should  certainly  go  if 
you  like  to  see  your  name  encompassed  by  those 
of  countesses  and  princes,  and  of  Americans 
who  spell  Smith  with  a  "  y  "  and  put  a  hyphen 
between  their  second  and  third  names.  There 
are,  as  I  say,  a  great  many  hotels  in  Cairo,  but 
Shepheard's  is  so  historical,  and  its  terrace  has 


CAIRO   AS   A  SHOW-PLACE  113 

been  made  the  scene  of  so  many  novels,  that  all 
sorts  of  amusing  people  go  there,  from  Sultans 
to  the  last  man  who  broke  the  bank  at  Monte 
Carlo,  and  its  terrace  is  like  a  private  box  at  a 
mask  ball.  About  the  best  way  to  see  Cairo  is 
in  a  wicker  chair  here  under  waving  palms,  some- 
thing to  smoke,  and  with  a  warm  sun  on  your 
back,  and  the  whole  world  passing  by  in  front  of 
you.  Broadway,  I  have  no  doubt,  is  an  interest- 
ing thoroughfare  to  those  who  do  not  know  it. 
I  should  judge  from  the  view  one  has  of  the  soles 
of  numerous  boots  planted  against  the  windows 
of  hotels  along  its  course  that  Broadway  to  the 
visiting  stranger  is  an  infinite  source  of  entertain- 
ment. But  there  are  no  camels  on  Broadway, 
and  there  are  no  sais. 

A  camel  by  itself  is  one  of  the  most  interesting 
animals  that  has  ever  been  created,  but  when 
it  blocks  the  way  of  a  dog -cart,  and  a  smart 
English  groom  endeavors  to  drive  around  it,  the 
incongruity  of  the  situation  appeals  to  you  as 
nothing  on  Broadway  can  ever  do.  Mr.  Laurence 
Hutton,  who  was  in  Cairo  before  I  reached  it, 
has  pointed  out  that  the  camel  is  the  real  aristo- 
crat of  Egypt.  The  camel  belongs  to  one  of  the 
very  first  families ;  he  was  there  when  Mena 
ruled,  and  he  is  there  now.  It  does  not  matter 
to  him  whether  it  is  a  Pharaoh  or  a  Mameluke  or 
a  Napoleon  or  a  Mixed  Tribunal  that  is  in  power, 
his  gods  are  unchanged,  and  he  and  the  palm- 
tree  have  preserved  their  ancient  individuality 
through  centuries.  He  shows  that  he  knows  this 
8 


114          THE   RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

in  the  proud  way  in  which  he  holds  his  head,  and 
in  his  disdainful  manner  of  waving  and  unwind- 
ing his  neck,  and  in  the  rudeness  with  which  he 
impedes  traffic  and  selfishly  considers  his  own 
comfort.  These  are  the  signs  of  ancient  lineage 
all  the  world  over.  He  is  not  the  shaggy,  moth- 
eaten  object  we  see  in  the  circus  tent  at  home. 
He  is  nicely  shaven,  like  a  French  poodle,  and 
covered  with  fine  trappings,  and  he  bends  and 
struts  with  the  dignity  of  a  peacock.  He  posses- 
ses also  that  uncertainty  of  conduct  that  is  the 
privilege  of  a  royal  mind;  fellahin  and  Arabs 
pretend  they  are  his  masters,  and  lead  him  about 
with  a  rope,  but  that  never  disturbs  him  nor 
breaks  his  spirit.  When  he  wants  to  lie  down 
he  lies  dowri,  whether  he  is  in  the  desert  or  in 
the  Ezbekiyeh  Road ;  and  when  he  decides  to 
get  up  he  leaves  you  in  doubt  for  some  feverish 
seconds  as  to  which  part  of  him  will  get  up  first. 
To  properly  appreciate  the  camel  you  should 
ride  him  and  experience  his  getting  up  and  his 
sitting  down.  He  never  does  either  of  these 
things  the  same  way  twice.  Sometimes  he  breaks 
one  leg  in  two  or  three  places  where  it  had  never 
broken  before,  and  sinks  or  rises  in  a  north- 
easterly direction,  and  then  suddenly  changes 
his  course  and  lurches  up  from  the  rear,  and  you 
grasp  his  neck  wildly,  only  to  find  that  he  is  sink- 
ing rapidly  to  one  side,  and  rising,  with  a  jump 
equal  to  that  of  a  horse  taking  a  fence,  in  the 
front.  He  can  disjoint  himself  in  more  different 
places  than  explorers  have  found  sources  for  the 


CAIRO   AS   A   SHOW-PLACE  115 

river  Nile,  and  there  is  no  keener  pleasure  than 
that  which  he  affords  you  in  watching  the  coun- 
tenance of  a  friend  who  is  being  elevated  on  his 
back  for  the  first  time.  He  and  the  palm-tree 
can  make  any  landscape  striking,  and  he  and  the 
sais  are  the  most  picturesque  features  of  Cairo. 

The  sais  is  a  runner  who  keeps  in  front  of  a 
carriage  and  warns  common  people  out  of  the 
way,  and  who  beats  them  with  a  stick  if  they  do 
not  hurry  up  about  it.  He  is  a  relic  of  the  days 
when  the  traffic  in  all  of  the  streets  was  so  con- 
gested that  he  was  an  absolute  necessity  ;  now  he 
makes  it  possible  for  a  carriage  to  move  forward 
at  a  trot,  which  without  his  aid  it  could  not  do. 
It  is  obvious  that  to  do  this  he  must  run  swiftly. 
Most  men  when  they  run  bend  their  bodies  for- 
ward and  keep  their  mouths  closed  in  order  to 
save  their  wind.  The  sais  runs  with  his  shoulders 
thrown  back  and  trumpeting  like  an  enraged 
elephant.  He  holds  his  long  wand  at  his  side 
like  a  musket,  and  not  trailing  in  his  hand  like  a 
walking-stick,  and  he  wears  a  soft  shirt  of  white 
stuff,  and  a  sleeveless  coat  buried  in  gold  lace. 
His  breeches  are  white,  and  as  voluminous  as  a 
woman's  skirts ;  they  fall  to  a  few  inches  above 
his  knee ;  the  rest  of  his  brown  leg  is  bare,  and 
rigid  with  muscle.  On  his  head  he  has  a  fez 
with  a  long  black  tassel,  and  a  magnificent  silk 
scarf  of  many  colors  is  bound  tightly  around  his 
waist.  He  is  a  perfect  ideal  of  color  and  move- 
ment, and  as  he  runs  he  bellows  like  a  bull,  or 
roars  as  you  have  heard  a  lion  roar  at  feeding- 


Il6  THE   RULERS   OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

time  in  a  menagerie.  It  is  not  a  human  cry  at 
all,  and  you  never  hear  it,  even  to  the  last  day 
of  your  stay  in  Cairo,  without  a  start,  as  though 
it  were  a  cry  of  "  help !"  at  night,  or  the  quick- 
clanging  bell  of  a  fire-engine.  There  is  nothing 
else  in  Cairo  which  is  so  satisfying.  There  are 
sometimes  two  sais  running  abreast,  dressed  ex- 
actly alike,  and  with  the  upper  part  of  their 
bodies  as  rigid  as  the  wand  pressed  against  their 
side,  and  with  the  ends  of  their  scarf  and  the 
long  tassel  streaming  out  behind.  As  they  yell 
and  bellow,  donkeys  and  carriages  and  people 
scramble  out  of  their  way  until  the  carriage  they 
precede  has  rolled  rapidly  by.  Only  princesses 
of  the  royal  harem,  and  consuls-general,  and  the 
heads  of  the  Army  of  Occupation  and  the  Egyp- 
tian army  are  permitted  two  sais;  other  people 
may  have  one.  They  appealed  to  me  as  much 
more  autocratic  appendages  than  a  troop  of  life- 
guards. The  rastaquouere  who  first  introduces 
them  in  Paris  will  make  his  name  known  in  a 
day,  and  a  Lord  Mayor's  show  or  a  box-seat  on 
a  four-in-hand  will  be  a  modest  and  middle-class 
distinction  in  comparison. 

These  camels  and  sais  are  but  two  of  the  things 
you  see  from  your  wicker  chair  on  the  marble 
terrace  at  Shepheard's.  The  others  are  hundreds 
of  donkey-boys  in  blue  night-gowns  slit  open  at 
the  throat  and  showing  their  bare  breasts,  and 
with  them  as  many  long-eared  donkeys,  rendered 
even  more  absurd  than  they  are  in  a  state  of 
nature  by  fantastic  clippings  of  their  coats  and 


CAIRO   AS   A   SHOW-PLACE  1 19 

strings  of  jangling  brass  and  blue  beads  around 
their  necks. 

There  are  also  the  women  of  Cairo,  the  en- 
slaved half  of  Egypt,  who  have  been  brought, 
through  generations  of  training  and  tradition,  to 
look  upon  any  man  save  their  husband  as  their 
enemy,  as  a  thing  to  be  shunned.  This  has 
become  instinct  with  them,  as  it  is  instinctive 
with  women  of  Northern  countries  to  turn  to 
men  for  sympathy  or  support,  as  being  in  some 
ways  stronger  than  themselves.  But  these  wom- 
en of  Cairo,  who  look  like  an  army  of  nuns,  are 
virtually  shut  off  from  mankind,  with  the  excep- 
tion of  one  man,  as  are  nuns,  and  they  have  not 
the  one  great  consolation  allowed  the  nun — they 
have  no  souls  to  be  saved,  nor  religion,  nor  a 
belief  in  a  future  life. 

There  was  a  young  girl  married  while  I  was  in 
Cairo.  The  streets  around  the  palace  of  her  fa- 
ther were  hung  with  flags  for  a  week ;  the  garden 
about  his  house  was  enclosed  with  a  tent  which 
was  worth  in  money  twenty  thousand  dollars, 
and  which  was  as  beautiful  to  the  eye  as  the  in- 
terior of  a  mosque ;  for  a  week  the  sheiks  who 
rented  the  estates  of  the  high  contracting  parties 
were  fed  at  their  expense ;  for  a  week  men  sang 
and  bands  played  and  the  whole  neighborhood 
feasted  ;  and  on  the  last  night  everybody  went 
to  the  wedding  and  drank  coffee  and  smoked  ci- 
garettes and  listened  to  a  young  man  singing 
Arabian  love-songs.  I  naturally  did  not  see  the 
bride.  The  women  who  did  see  her  described 


120         THE   RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

her  as  very  beautiful,  barely  sixteen  years  old, 
and  covered  with  pearls  and  diamonds.  She  was 
weeping  bitterly;  her  mother,  it  appeared,  had 
arranged  the  match.  I  did  not  see  her,  but  I 
saw  the  bridegroom.  He  was  fat  and  stupid, 
and  over  sixty,  and  he  had  white  hair  and  a 
white  beard.  A  priest  recited  the  Koran  before 
him  at  the  door  of  the  house,  and  a  band  played, 
and  the  people  cheered  the  Khedive  three  times, 
and  then  the  crowd  parted,  and  the  bridegroom 
was  marched  to  the  door  which  led  to  the  stairs, 
at  the  top  of  which  the  girl  awaited  him.  Two 
grinning  eunuchs  crouched  on  this  dark  staircase, 
with  lamps  held  high  above  their  heads,  and 
closed  the  door  behind  him.  His  sixteen-year- 
old  bride  has  him  to  herself  now — him  and  his 
eunuchs — until  he  or  she  dies.  We  could  show 
similitudes  between  this  wedding  and  some  others 
in  civilized  lands,  but  it  is  much  too  serious  a 
matter  to  be  cynical  about. 

The  women  of  Egypt  are  as  much  slaves  as 
ever  were  the  negroes  of  our  South.  They  are 
petted  and  fattened  and  given  a  home,  but  they 
must  look  at  life  through  barriers — barriers  across 
their  boxes  at  the  opera,  and  barriers  across  the 
windows  of  their  broughams  when  they  drive 
abroad,  and  barriers  across  their  very  faces.  As 
long  as  one-half  of  the  Egyptian  people  are  en- 
slaved and  held  in  bondage  and  classed  as  an- 
imals without  souls,  so  long  will  an  Army  of 
Occupation  ride  over  the  land,  and  insult  by 
its  presence  the  khedival  power.  No  country 


CAIRO   AS  A  SHOW-PLACE  121 

in  these  days  can  be  truly  great  in  which  the 
women  have  no  voice,  no  influence,  and  no  re- 
spect. There  are  worse  things  in  Egypt  than 
bad  irrigation,  and  the  harem  is  the  worst  of 
them.  If  the  Egyptians  want  to  be  free  them- 
selves, they  should  first  free  their  daughters 
and  their  mothers.  The  educated  Egyptian  is 
ashamed  of  his  national  costume ;  but  let  him 
feel  shame  for  some  of  his  national  customs.  A 
frock-coat  and  a  harem  will  not  go  together. 

The  English,  who  have  done  so  many  fine 
things  for  Egypt's  good,  and  who  keep  an  army 
there  to  emphasize  the  fact,  have  arranged  that 
any  slave  who  comes  to  the  office  of  the  Consul- 
General  and  claims  his  protection  can  have  it ; 
but  these  slaves  of  the  married  men  are  not  grant- 
ed even  this  chance  of  escape. 

And  so  they  live  like  birds  in  a  cage.  They 
eat  and  dress  and  undress,  and  expose  their  youth 
and  beauty,  and  hide  their  age  and  ugliness,  until 
they  die.  The  cry  along  the  Nile  a  few  years  ago 
was, "  Egypt  for  the  Egyptians,"  and  a  very  good 
cry  it  was,  although  the  wrong  man  first  started  it. 
But  there  was  another  cry  raised  in  the  land  of 
Egypt  many  hundreds  of  years  before  of "  Let  my 
people  go,"  and  the  woman  who  can  raise  that 
again  to-day,  and  who  can  set  free  her  sisters  of 
the  East,  will  be  doing  a  greater  work  than  any 
woman  is  doing  at  the  present  time  or  has  ever 
done. 

The  women  who  pass  before  you  in  the  pro- 
cession at  the  foot  of  the  terrace  arc  of  two  classes 


122  THE    RULERS    OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

only.  There  is  no  middle  class  in  Egypt.  The 
poor  are  huddled  up  in  a  black  bag  that  hides 
their  bodies  from  the  crown  of  the  head  to  the 
feet.  What  looks  like  the  upper  end  of  a  black 
silk  stocking  falls  over  the  face  from  the  bridge 
of  the  nose  and  fastens  behind  the  ears,  and  a 
brass  tube  about  the  size  of  a  spool  is  tied  be- 
tween the  eyes.  You  see  in  consequence  nothing 
but  their  eyes,  and  as  these  are  perhaps  their  best 
feature,  they  do  not  all  suffer  from  their  enforced 
disguise.  The  only  women  whose  bare  faces  you 
can  see,  and  from  whom  you  may  judge  of  the 
beauty  of  the  rest,  are  the  good  women  of  the 
Coptic  village,  who  form  a  sort  of  sisterhood,  and 
the  dancing- girls,  who  are  not  so  good.  Some 
of  these  have  the  straight  nose,  the  narrow  eyes, 
and  the  perfect  figure  of  Cleopatra,  as  we  picture 
her;  but  the  faces  of  the  majority  are  formless, 
with  broad,  fat  noses,  full  lips,  and  their  figures 
are  without  waists  or  hips,  and  their  ankles  are 
as  round  as  a  man's  upper  arm.  When  they  are 
pretty  they  are  very  pretty,  but  those  that  are 
so  are  so  few  and  are  so  covered  with  gold  that 
one  suspects  they  are  very  much  the  exception. 
Of  the  women  of  the  upper  class  you  see  only  a 
glimpse  as  they  are  swept  by  in  their  broughams, 
with  the  sais  in  front  and  a  eunuch  on  the  box 
and  the  curtains  half  lowered. 

Besides  these,  much  passes  that  is  intended 
for  your  especial  entertainment.  Sellers  of  tur- 
quoises, which  they  dig  out  from  various  creases 
in  their  robes ;  venders  of  stuffed  crocodiles  and 


CAIRO   AS   A   SHOW-PLACE 


live  monkeys ;  strange  men  from  the  desert  with 
a  jackal,  which  they  throw,  bound  by  all  four 
legs,  and  snarling  and  snapping,  on  the  marble 
at  your  feet ;  little  girls  who  sing  songs,  and  play 
accompaniments  to  them  on  their  throats  with 
the  tips  of  their  fingers;  women  conjurers,  who 
draw  strings  of  needles  and  burning  flax  from 
their  mouths,  and  who  swallow  nasty  little  wrig- 
gling snakes,  and 
hatch  pretty  fluffy 
little  chickensout  of 
the  slabs  of  the  ter- 
race. Or  else  there 
is  a  troop  of  blue 
I  and  white  Egyptian 


SHADOW  OF  THE  PYRAMID  OF  CHEOPS 
(From  a  Photograph  taken  on  the  top  of  the  Pyramid  just  before  sunset) 

soldiers  marching  by,  or  gorgeous  young  officers 
on  polo  ponies,  or  red-coated  Tommies  on  don- 
keys, with  their  toes  trailing  in  the  dust  and  the 
ribbons  of  their  Scotch  caps  floating  out  behind ; 
and  consuls -general  with  gorgeous  guards  in 
gold  lace,  and  with  wicked-looking  curved  silver 


124          THE    RULERS    OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

swords ;  or  the  young  Khedive  himself,  who 
comes  with  a  great  clatter  of  hoofs  and  bellow- 
ing sais  before,  and  another  galloping  troop  of 
cavalry  in  the  rear,  at  the  sound  of  which  the 
people  run  to  the  curb  and  touch  the  fez,  as  he 
raises  his  hand  to  his,  and  rolls  by  in  a  cloud  of 
dust. 

There  are  very  good  things  to  see,  and  with  a 
companion  on  one  side  to  explain  them,  and  an- 
other on  the  other  side  to  whom  you  can  impart 
this  information  as  though  you  had  been  born 
knowing  it,  you  cannot  spend  a  more  entertain- 
ing afternoon.  There  is  only  one  drawback,  and 
that  is  a  lurking  doubt  that  you  should  be  up 
and  about  seeing  the  show -places.  Friday,  in 
consequence,  is  the  best  day  in  Cairo,  as  all  the 
things  you  ought  to  see  are  then  closed,  and  you 
can  sit  still  on  the  terrace  with  a  clear  conscience. 
Among  the  mosques  and  the  tombs  and  the  pal- 
aces and  museums  to  which  all  good  tourists  go, 
and  of  which  there  are  excellent  descriptions, 
giving  their  various  dimensions  and  other  partic- 
ulars, in  the  guide-books,  there  are  the  Citadel 
and  the  Mosque  of  Mehemet  Ali.  The  Citadel 
is  the  fortress  built  on  the  hill  above  the  city,  but 
which,  with  the  Oriental  incompleteness  of  that 
time,  was  reared  upon  high  but  not  upon  the 
highest  ground.  The  sequel  to  this  naturally  was 
that  when  Mehemet  Ali  wanted  the  city  of  Cairo 
he  sought  out  the  highest  ground,  and  dropped 
cannon-balls  into  the  fortress  until  it  capitulated. 
He  afterwards  asked  all  the  Mamelukes  to  dinner 


CAIRO   AS   A   SHOW-PLACE  125 

at  the  Citadel,  and  then  had  them  treacherously 
killed — all  but  one,  who  rode  his  horse  down  the 
side  of  the  Citadel  and  escaped.  If  you  can  im- 
agine the  reservoir  at  Forty-second  Street  placed 
upon  the  top  of  Madison  Square  Garden,  and  a 
man  riding  down  the  side  of  it,  you  can  under- 
stand what  a  very  difficult  and  dangerous  thing 
this  was  to  do.  There  is  no  doubt  that  he  did 
it,  for  I  saw  a  picture  of  him  in  the  very  act  in  a 
book  of  history  when  I  was  at  school,  and  I  also 
have  seen  the  marks  of  his  horse's  hoofs  in  the 
stone  parapet  of  the  Citadel,  and  they  are  just  as 
fresh  as  they  were  three  years  ago,  when  they 
were  on  the  other  side. 

The  Mosque  of  Mehemet  Ali  surmounts  the 
Citadel,  and  its  twin  minarets  are  the  distin- 
guishing mark  of  Cairo ;  they  are  as  conspicuous 
for  miles  above  the  city  as  is  the  dome  of  St. 
Paul's  over  London,  and  they  are  as  light  and 
graceful  as  it  is  impressive  and  heavy.  The 
men  on  guard  tie  big  yellow  shoes  on  your  feet 
before  they  allow  you  to  enter  this  mosque,  the 
outer  court -yard  of  which  is  floored  with  ala- 
baster, over  which  you  slide  as  though  you 
were  on  a  mirror  or  a  sheet  of  ice.  It  is  very 
beautiful,  and  one  is  as  unwilling  to  walk  on  it 
as  to  tramp  in  muddy  boots  over  a  satin  train. 
The  floor  of  the  mosque  is  covered  with  the 
most  magnificent  rugs,  as  wide -spreading  as  a 
sheet  and  as  heavy  as  so  much  gold  ;  alabaster 
pillars  reach  to  the  top  of  the  square,  empty 
building,  and  from  these  rise  five  domes,  colored 


126          THE   RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

blue  and  red,  and  lightened  with  gilded  letters. 
It  is  very  rich -looking,  gloomy,  silent,  and  im- 
pressive. It  is  the  best  of  the  mosques.  From 
the  outside,  on  the  ramparts,  you  can  see  Cairo 
stretching  out  below  for  miles  in  a  level  gray 
jumble  of  flat  roofs  and  rounded  domes  and  slen- 
der minarets,  with  the  high  walls  of  a  palace  here 
and  the  thick  green  of  a  park  there  to  break  the 
monotony ;  beyond  it  lies  the  Nile,  a  twisting 
ribbon  of  silver;  and  beyond  that  rich  green  fields 
and  canals  and  bunches  of  palm-trees ;  and  seven 
miles  away,  where  the  green  ceases  and  the  desert 
begins,  are  three  monuments  of  gray  stone,  look- 
ing, at  that  distance,  disappointingly  small  and 
familiarly  commonplace.  It  is  not,  I  think,  until 
you  have  seen  them  several  times,  and  have 
climbed  to  their  top  and  gazed  up  at  them  from 
below,  that  you  appreciate  the  pyramids  as  you 
had  expected  to  appreciate  them ;  but  after 
they  have  laid  their  charm  upon  you,  you  will 
find  yourself  twisting  your  neck  to  take  an- 
other look,  or  going  out  of  your  way  to  see 
them  again  before  the  sun  has  said  good -night 
to  them,  as  it  has  done  ever  since  it  first  climbed 
over  the  edge  of  the  world  and  found  them  wait- 
ing there. 

There  is  a  mosque  on  the  outside  of  the  city 
which  people  visit  on  certain  days  to  see  the 
howling  dervishes  go  through  their  peculiar  form 
of  worship.  This  mosque  consists  of  four  square 
walls  with  a  dome.  It  is  whitewashed  within, 
and  bare  and  rude  and  old.  The  sunlight  enters 


CAIRO  AS   A   SHOW-PLACE  127 

it  through  square  holes  cut  in  the  dome,  and 
beats  upon  thirty  or  forty  men  who  stand  in  a 
semicircle  facing  the  East.  They  are  of  all  sorts, 
from  Arabs  of  the  desert  with  long  hair  and  wild 
eyes,  to  fat,  pleased-looking  merchants  from  the 
bazars,  and  the  beggars  and  water-carriers  of  the 
streets.  Around  them  on  chairs  are  the  tourists 
and  the  residents,  like  the  spectators  at  a  play 
rather  than  the  guests  of  a  religious  sect  watch- 
ing a  religious  ceremony.  Most  of  the  men  wear 
their  hats,  and  some  of  the  women  take  careful 
notes  and  make  sketches.  They  reminded  me 
of  medical  students  at  a  clinic  when  a  man  is 
being  cut  up.  An  archdeacon  from  one  of  our 
Western  cities  wore  his  hat,  to  show,  probably, 
that  he  disapproved  of  the  whole  thing ;  but  as 
he  used  to  eat  with  his  knife  while  on  board  the 
Fulda,  his  conduct  in  any  place  was  not  to  be 
considered.  The  priest  recites  something  from 
the  Koran,  and  the  men  repeat  it,  moving  their 
bodies  back  and  forward  as  they  do  so  with  grad- 
ually increasing  rapidity.  What  they  may  be  say- 
ing is  quite  unintelligible,  and  the  chorus  they 
make  resembles  that  of  no  human  sound,  but 
rather  the  gasping  or  panting  of  an  animal.  It 
is  to  the  visitor  absolutely  without  any  religious 
significance ;  all  that  is  impressive  about  it  is  its 
horrible  earnestness  and  its  at  times  repulsive  re- 
sults. As  the  voice  of  the  priest  grows  more 
accentuated  the  bodies  of  the  men  swing  farther 
and  lower,  until  their  hair  sweeps  the  floor,  and 
their  eyes,  when  they  throw  their  bodies  back, 


128  THE    RULERS    OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

are  on  a  level  with  those  of  the  spectators.  A 
drum  beats  in  quickening  time  to  the  voice  of  the 
priest  and  to  the  gasps  of  the  dervishes,  and  a 
flute  playing  a  weird  accompaniment  seems  to 
mock  at  their  fierce  grunts  and  breathings.  It 
was  one  of  the  most  unpleasant  exhibitions  I 
ever  witnessed,  and  affected  one's  nerves  to  such 
a  degree  that  several  of  the  women  had  to 
leave.  The  eyes  of  the  men  rolled  in  their  sock- 
ets, and  their  lips  parted,  and  through  their 
clinched  teeth  came  fiercer  and  louder  gasps, 
until  the  chorus  of  sound  reached  you  like  the 
quick  panting  of  an  engine  as  it  draws  out  of 
a  station.  The  sweat  ran  from  them  like  water 
from  a  sponge,  and  the  veins  stood  out  on  their 
faces,  showing  in  congested  knots  beneath  the 
skin.  Some  of  them  groaned,  and  others  shrieked 
and  cried  out,  "  Allah  !  Allah  !"  This  acted  like 
the  strokes  of  a  whip  on  the  others,  who  rocked 
more  and  more  violently,  and  swung  them- 
selves almost  off  their  feet.  Then,  as  the  mu- 
sic grew  fainter  the  motion  of  the  bending 
bodies  grew  less  vigorous  and  finally  ceased,  and 
the  men  stood  rigid,  some  apparently  unmoved 
and  unconcerned,  and  others  turning  and  reeling 
in  a  fit. 

While  this  was  going  forward,  and  you  felt  as 
though  you  were  assisting  at  a  heathen  rite  in 
which  self-punishment  was  being  inflicted  as  a  bid 
for  God's  indulgence,  two  interesting  things  hap- 
pened. An  officer  in  the  English  Army  of  Oc- 
cupation turned  to  his  dragoman  and  cried  aj; 


CAIRO   AS   A   SHOW-PLACE 


129 


the  top  of  his  voice, 
angrily  :  "  Do  you 
call  this  worth  ten 
piasters?  Well,  I 
don't.  Now  if  you've 
got  anything  to 
show  me,  take  me 
to  see  it.  This  isn't 
worth  coming  to  see. 
You're  a  rank  im- 
postor." 

The  other  thing 
was  the  act  of  a 
native  woman,  who 
brought  her  child  to 
the  door  and  hand- 
ed it  to  a  priest,  who 
took  it  in  his  arms 
and  passed  with  it  in 
front  of  the  swing- 
ing, gasping,  crazy 
semicircle  of  men. 
The  child  was  about 
three  years  old,  and 
was  dying,  and  the 
mother  had  brought 
it  there  to  be  cured 
by  the  breath  of  the 
dervishes.  As  it 
passed  before  them, 
the  hair  of  some  of 
tin-  men  swept  its 
9 


A    SECTION   OF   THE    PYR: 


130          THE   RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

arm,  and  it  turned  its  frightened  eyes  up  to  those 
of  the  priest,  who  smiled  gravely  down  upon  the 
baby  and  bore  him  outstretched  in  his  arms  three 
times  in  front  of  the  swinging  crescent.  The 
faith  of  the  child's  mother  appealed  to  some  of 
us  more  than  did  the  Englishman's  desire  to  get 
his  money's  worth.  The  incident  is  only  of  in- 
terest here  as  showing  perhaps  why  the  Army 
of  Occupation  is  not  as  popular  as  it  might  be. 
This  officer  was  no  doubt  an  excellent  soldier — 
the  ribbons  on  his  tunic  showed  that  —  and  no 
one  would  have  thought  of  questioning  his  abil- 
ity to  handle  raw  recruits  or  his  knowledge  of 
tactics.  But  in  handling  the  Egyptian  tactics  do 
not  count  for  so  much  as  tact. 

There  are  several  ways  of  reaching  the  pyra- 
mids, and  it  is  eminently  in  keeping  with  the 
other  incongruities  of  the  place  and  time  that  the 
most  popular  way  of  visiting  them  is  on  a  four- 
in-hand  coach,  with  a  guard  in  a  red  coat  and  a 
bell-shaped  white  beaver  tooting  on  his  horn,  and 
a  young  gentleman  with  a  boutonniere  and  an 
unhappy  smile  holding  the  reins  and  working  his 
way  in  and  out  between  long  strings  of  camels. 
There  is  a  very  smart  hotel  about  two  hundred 
yards  from  the  foot  of  the  pyramids,  and  you 
take  a  donkey  there  or  a  camel  and  ride  up  a 
sandy  road  to  the  base  of  the  Pyramid  of  Cheops. 
There  are  then  several  things  that  you  may  do. 
You  can  either  climb  to  the  top  of  this  first  pyra- 
mid, or  crawl  into  its  interior,  or  walk  over  to  see 
the  Sphinx,  or  make  a  tour  of  subterranean  tombs 


CAIRO   AS   A    SHOW-PLACE  13! 

and  passageways  of  alabaster  and  polished  stones, 
which  are  lighted  for  you  by  magnesium  wire  or 
stumps  of  candles. 

It  seems  absurd  to  say  that  the  Sphinx  is  dis- 
appointing, but  so  many  who  have  seen  it  say  so 
that  I  feel  I  am  one  of  many,  and  not  individu- 
ally lacking  in  reverence  or  imagination.  In  the 
first  place,  the  approach  to  it  is  bad ;  you  come 
at  the  Sphinx  not  from  the  front,  but  from  the 
rear,  where  all  you  can  see  of  it  is  a  round  ball  of 
crumbling  stone  spreading  out  from  a  neck  of 
broken  outline,  much  smaller  and  meaner  than 
you  had  imagined  it  would  be.  In  the  second 
place,  instead  of  looking  up  at  it,  or  having  it 
look  down  at  you,  you  view  it  first  from  a  semi- 
circular ridge  of  sand,  at  the  bottom  of  which  it 
reposes,  and  at  such  a  near  view  that  whatever 
outline  or  character  of  countenance  it  once  pos- 
sessed is  lost.  I  have  seen  photographs  of  the 
Sphinx,  taken  while  I  was  in  Cairo,  much  more 
impressive  than  the  Sphinx  itself.  Lying  in  a 
hollow  of  the  sand  hills  as  it  does,  the  farther  you 
move  away  from  it  in  order  to  get  a  better  focus, 
the  less  you  see  of  it,  and  as  you  draw  nearer  to 
it  it  loses  its  meaning,  as  does  the  scenery  of  a 
theatre  when  you  are  on  the  wrong  side  of  the 
foot-lights.  I  know  that  that  is  an  unpopular 
thing  to  say,  and  that  there  are  many  who  feel 
thrills  when  they  first  look  upon  the  face  of  the 
Sphinx,  and  who  describe  their  emotions  to  you 
at  length,  and  who  write  down  their  impressions 
in  their  diaries  when  they  get  back  to  the  hotel. 


132     THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 

But  they  have  come  a  long  way  expecting  to  be 
thrilled,  and  they  do  not  intend  to  be  disappoint- 
ed. Some  of  the  sphinxes  in  the  museum  of 
Gizeh,  which  you  pass  on  your  way  to  the  pyra- 
mids, impressed  me  more  than  did  the  one  great 
Sphinx,  though  they  were  indoors  and  surround- 
ed by  attendants  and  the  cheap  decoration  of  the 
museum,  once  a  palace  for  the  harem.  They 
were  of  green  stone  and  of  huge  proportions,  and 
with  "  the  curling  lip  and  sneer  of  cold  com- 
mand"; and  if  you  look  at  them  long  enough 
you  feel  uncomfortable  shivers  down  your  back, 
and  a  perfectly  irrational  impulse  to  rush  at  them 
and  beat  them  in  the  face  and  force  them  to  tell 
you  what  they  know  and  what  they  have  kept 
back  and  have  been  keeping  back  for  centuries 
and  centuries.  Their  faces  show  that  they  know 
all  that  we  know  and  much  besides  that  we  shall 
never  know,  and  when  the  world  at  last  comes 
to  an  end  they  will  stretch  themselves  and  smile 
at  one  another  and  say:  "Now  they  know.it,  but 
we  knew  it  all  the  while.  We  could  have  told 
had  we  liked,  but  we  have  enjoyed  watching 
them  fretting  and  fuming  and  prying  about  and 
tinkering  at  our  faces  with  their  little  hammers, 
and  blowing  us  up  with  saltpetre  only  to  try  and 
put  us  back  again  with  steam.  We  who  have  kept 
our  secret  from  Herodotus  and  Caesar,  are  we  like- 
ly to  give  it  up  to  Ebers  and  Mark  Twain  ?" 

But  this  same  Sphinx  by  moonlight  impressed 
me  more  than  did  anything  I  saw  in  the  East. 
Not  as  one  sees  it  by  day,  with  tourists  and  pho- 


CAIRO   AS   A   SHOW-PLACE  133 

tographers  and  donkey -boys  making  it  cheap 
and  familiar,  but  at  night,  when  the  tourists  had 
gone  to  bed,  and  the  donkey-boys  had  been  paid 
to  keep  out  of  sight,  and  the  moonlight  threw  the 
great  negro  face  and  the  pyramids  back  of  it  into 
shadows  of  black  and  lines  of  silver,  and  the  yel- 
low desert  stretched  away  on  either  side  so  empty 
and  silent  that  I  thought  I  was  alone  and  back 
two  thousand  years  in  the  past,  discovering  the 
great  monuments  for  myself,  and  for  the  first  time. 
Before  you  ascend  the  Pyramid  of  Cheops  you 
must  deal  with  a  middle-man  in  the  person  of  the 
sheik  of  the  pyramids,  who  selects  guides  for  you, 
and  who  acts  as  though  the  pyramids  were  his 
private  show,  and  he  was  both  sole  proprietor 
and  ticket-taker  at  the  door.  He  lives  in  a  vil- 
lage near  by,  and  he  and  his  forefathers  have  al- 
ways been  allowed  a  monopoly  of  the  pyramids, 
and  distribute  their  patronage  to  those  guides 
who  will  pay  them  the  highest  percentage  of 
what  they  receive  from  the  visitors.  You  have 
three  men  to  help  you,  two  to  pull,  and  one  to 
push  and  to  dilate  on  the  view.  It  takes  over 
ten  minutes  to  climb  to  the  top,  with  the  men 
jerking  at  your  wrists,  and  the  third  man  shov- 
ing you  from  below.  It  is  not  a  difficult  feat, 
and  women  accomplish  it  every  day,  but  it  leaves 
you  in  a  breathless  state  when  you  reach  the  sum- 
mit, and  you  are  stiff  above  the  knees  for  a  day 
or  two  after  you  have  come  down.  When  you 
have  reached  the  summit  the  guides  cheer  feebly 
to  give  you  the  idea  that  you  have  accomplished 


134          THE   RULERS   OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

something  which  has  often  been  attempted  be- 
fore, but  never  so  successfully;  but  you  are  not 
deceived,  and  you  do  not  feel  like  cheering  your- 
self. The  view  is  worth  the  climb,  however,  and 
the  sight  of  the  shadow  of  the  pyramid,  spread- 
ing out  over  the  villages  and  canals  below  like  a 
black  cloud,  impresses  you  more  with  its  immen- 
sity than  the  fact  that  it  is  a  hundred  feet  higher 
than  the  top  of  the  Diana  on  the  Madison  Square 
Garden  tower.  I  am  sure  of  this  fact,  because 
the  man  who  built  the  Madison  Square  Garden 
assured  me  of  it  between  breaths  on  the  summit 
of  the  pyramid.  While  you  are  resting,  the  thing 
to  do  is  to  pay  one  of  the  guides  to  attempt  to 
run  down  the  pyramid  you  are  on,  cross  the  heavy 
sand  to  the  pyramid  beyond,  and  reach  its  top  in 
eight  minutes.  When  you  give  the  word  he  dis- 
appears with  a  bound  and  drops  into  space,  skip- 
ping and  jumping  and  growing  smaller  and  small- 
er as  he  goes,  until  he  looks  like  a  fluttering 
handkerchief ;  and  when  he  reaches  the  sand  he 
is  as  small  as  a  child  of  three,  and  his  ascent  of 
the  other  pyramid  suggests  a  white  pigeon  shuf- 
fling up  the  steep  roof  of  a  barn.  It  is  distinctly 
on  his  part  a  sporting  thing  to  do.  The  descent 
of  the  pyramid  is  very  much  worse  than  going  up, 
and  you  need  to  go  very  slowly,  and  not  to  look 
too  often  at  the  people  crawling  about  like  ants 
below.  Only  four  men,  however,  in  six  years 
have  slipped  and  fallen  during  this  descent,  and 
one  of  them  had  been  drinking.  They  were  all 
killed.  The  more  you  see  of  the  pyramids  the 


• 


DAIIAHEEYAIIS    ON     IIIK    Mil     l:l-H>KK    CAIRO 


CAIRO    AS    A    SHOW-PLACE  137 

more  you  want  to  see  of  them,  although  I  think 
one  ascent  is  all  perhaps  you  will  care  about  tak- 
ing; but  their  dignity  and  the  wonder  of  their 
being  where  they  are,  and  for  so  long,  increases 
with  every  look  at  them.  You  cannot  grow  too 
familiar  with  the  pyramids.  They  will  not  have  it. 

On  the  road  back  from  the  Pyramids  of  Gizeh 
there  are  other  pyramids  within  sight  of  Cairo, 
but  these  are  those  with  which  the  Sphinx  is  as- 
sociated. You  will  see  here  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  sights  of  Cairo,  the  dahabeeyahs  on  the 
Nile.  They  and  their  white  sails,  especially  when 
they  come  wing  and  wing  before  the  wind,  are 
the  most  beautiful  of  floating  objects,  and  when 
there  are  hundreds  of  them  coming  towards  you 
in  lessening  perspective,  with  the  sun  shining  on 
the  sails,  and  the  banks  on  either  side  alive  and 
moving  with  the  palms,  the  river  Nile  becomes 
the  best  part  of  Cairo.  , 

There  is  another  place  on  the  Nile  which  you 
should  visit,  and  to  which  tourists  seldom  go. 
This  is  the  isle  of  Rodda,  on  the  bank  of  which 
Moses  was  found,  and  where  you  may  see  the 
Nilometer.  This  is  a  well  about  sixteen  feet  in 
diameter,  connected  by  a  channel  with  the  Nile. 
It  is  made  of  masonry,  and  down  one  side  there 
runs  a  column  on  which  are  inscribed  ancient 
Arabian  and  Cufic  numerals,  or  what  answer  for 
numerals.  It  was  dug  many  centuries  ago,  and 
it  marks  the  rising  and  falling  of  the  river,  and  at 
the  same  time  the  prosperity  or  dismay  of  Egypt. 
When  the  tide  begins  to  rise,  this  rude  instru- 


138  THE    RULERS  OF    THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

ment  is  watched  hourly,  and  the  hopes  of  the 
people  rise  and  fall  as  the  muddy  water  moves  up 
or  down  the  narrow  well.  When  it  reaches  a 
certain  height  the  sheik  in  charge  declares  that 
the  time  has  come  for  cutting  the  banks  and  ir- 
rigating the  land.  In  ancient  days  the  rate  of 
taxation  was  determined  by  the  height  of  the  in- 
undation, and  it  is  said  that  the  sheik  in  charge 
of  the  Nilometer  is  still  under  the  influence  of 
the  government,  to  whose  advantage  it  is  to  make 
the  fellahin  believe  that  the  inundation  is  favor- 
able. It  was  the  engineers  under  Napoleon  who 
discovered  that  the  Nilometer  was  being  tam- 
pered with,  but  there  is  no  likelihood  of  its  being 
abused  to-day  under  the  English,  whose  improve- 
ment of  the  irrigation  of  Egypt  has  been  their 
best  work,  and  for  the  fellahin's  best  good.  But  it 
is  interesting,  nevertheless,  to  look  down  into  the 
old  well,  overgrown  with  vines  and  surrounded 
by  ruin  and  crumbling  walls  and  broken  lattices, 
and  to  think  that  for  centuries  it  brought  news 
of  famine  or  of  plenty,  and  that  it  was,  primitive 
as  its  construction  is,  the  pulse  of  Egypt. 

The  pulse  of  Egypt  to-day  is  not  shown  in  the 
mere  rising  or  falling  of  a  body  of  water.  It  is 
less  primitive  in  its  construction,  and  no  one 
knows  which  way  it  is  going  to  jump.  In  the 
next  chapter  I  shall  try  to  tell  something  of  the 
men  who  have  their  fingers  on  Egypt's  pulse, 
and  who  are  agreed  in  only  one  thing — that  there 
are  too  many  fingers  for  Egypt's  good. 


THE  ENGLISHMEN   IX   KCVl'T 

[HEN  the  visitor  to  Cairo  first  grasps 
the  extent  of  his  own  ignorance  of 
Egypt,  and  appreciates  that  if  he  is 
to  understand  its  monuments  and 
the  signs  of  past  times  about  him 
he  must  study  the  history  of  the  whole  world 
for  forty  centuries,  he  is  apt  to  retreat  precip- 
itately. Later,  as  a  compromise,  he  proposes 
skipping  thirty-nine  centuries  and  limiting  his  re- 
searches to  the  study  of  the  political  and  social 
conditions  of  Egypt  during  the  last  ten  years. 
And  when  he  begins  jauntily  on  this  he  finds  that 
all  that  has  gone  before,  from  Rameses  II.  to 
Mehemet  AH,  is  as  simple  as  the  line  of  Popes  in 
comparison  with  the  anomalies  and  intricacies  of 
government  that  have  arisen  within  the  last  dec- 
ade. Yet  the  very  intricacies  of  the  subject  give 
to  this  study  a  fascination  entirely  apart  from  its 
rare  picturcsqueness,  and  no  matter  what  manner 
of  man  he  may  be,  he  cannot  but  find  some  side 
of  the  situation  which  appeals  to  him.  I  f  his  mind 
be  constituted  like  that  of  a  ready  reckoner  he 


140  THE    RULERS   OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

can  revel  in  unravelling  the  intricacies  of  the 
Caisse  and  the  Laws  of  Liquidation  ;  if  it  is  judi- 
cial, he  can  perhaps  elucidate  the  powers  of  the 
Mixed  Tribunal ;  if  romantic,  he  has  the  career 
of  Ismail,  the  most  magnificent  of  patriots  and 
profligate  of  monarchs;  and  if  it  turns  towards 
adventure  and  the  clash  of  arms,  he  can  read  of 
the  heroic  fanaticism  of  Fuzzy  Wuzzy,  the  son 
of  the  Mahdi,  of  the  futile  mission  of  Gordon,  of 
Stewart's  march  across  the  desert,  and  of  the  des- 
perate valor  of  the  fight  at  Aboo-Klea. 

But-  it  is  the  paradoxical  nature  of  Egypt's 
present  situation  which  gives  it  its  chief  interest, 
and  lends  to  it  the  peculiar  fascination  of  a  puz- 
zle, or  one  of  Whistler's  witticisms.  For,  while 
Egypt  is  not  free,  as  is  Morocco,  nor  under  a 
protectorate,  as  is  Tunis,  she  is  still  free  and  still 
protected.  She  is  free  to  coin  money,  to  main- 
tain an  army,  and  to  make  treaties ;  and  yet  she 
pays  six  million  dollars  a  year  tribute  to  Turkey 
as  a  part  of  the  Ottoman  Empire,  and  her  army 
that  she  is  allowed  to  maintain  is  officered  by  Eng- 
lish soldiers,  whom  she  is  also  allowed  to  maintain. 
She  may  not  pay  out  the  money  she  is  allowed 
to  coin  without  the  consent  of  foreigners  ;  she 
cannot  punish  the  man  who  steals  this  money,  be 
he  Greek,  English,  or  American,  without  the  ap- 
proval of  these  foreigners ;  and  her  official  lan- 
guage is  that  of  one  foreign  power,  her  ostensible 
protector  is  another,  and  her  real  protector  is  still 
another,  whose  commands  are  given  under  the 
irritating  disguise  of  "  advice." 


THE   ENGLISHMEN    IN    EGYPT  143 

Alfred  Milner,  the  late  under-secretary  for  fi- 
nance in  Egypt,  whose  England  in  ligypt  is  the 
best  book  on  the  subject,  though  it  reads  like  a 
novel,  has  put  it  in  this  way  :  "  It  is  not  given 
to  mortal  intelligence  to  understand  at  one  blow 
the  complexities  of  Turkish  suzerainty  and  for- 
eign treaty  rights ;  to  realize  the  various  pow- 
ers of  interference  and  obstruction  possessed  by 
consuls  and  consuls -general,  by  commissioners 
of  the  public  debt,  and  other  mixed  administra- 
tions ;  to  distinguish  English  officers  who  are 
English  from  English  officers  who  are  Egyptian, 
foreign  judges  of  the  international  courts  from 
foreign  judges  of  the  native  courts;  to  follow 
the  writhings  of  the  Egyptian  government  in  its 
struggle  to  escape  from  the  fine  meshes  of  the 
capitulations ;  to  appreciate  precisely  what  laws 
that  government  can  make  with  the  consent  of 
only  six  powers,  and  for  what  laws  it  requires  the 
consent  of  no  less  than  fourteen." 

It  seems  rather  unfair  to  saddle  the  responsi- 
bility for  all  of  these  burdens  and  for  this  re- 
markable condition  of  affairs,  which  is  unequalled 
in  history,  upon  the  shoulders  of  one  man,  but 
one  man  is  responsible  for  it  directly  and  indi- 
rectly. He  is  still  alive,  a  hanger-on  at  the 
court  of  the  Sultan  of  Turkey,  he  who  was  at 
one  time  the  most  picturesque  monarch  of  the 
world.  Ismail  Pasha  became  Khedive  a  little 
before  the  time  of  the  close  of  our  Civil  War. 
Egypt  had  never  been  more  prosperous  than  then 
—owing  but  fifteen  million  dollars.  In  1876,  when 


144  THE    RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

Ismail  was'deposed  and  his  son  Tewfik  Pasha  put 
in  his  place,  he  had  increased  the  debt  of  Egypt  to 
four  hundred  and  forty-five  million  dollars.  Is- 
mail was  a  typical  Oriental  ruler  ;  he  had  the  typ- 
ical Oriental  ruler's  French  veneer  and  education, 
a  combination  which  has  been  found  to  produce 
most  serious  results.  When  an  Oriental  is  left 
alone  he  is  a  barbarian,  or  he  used  to  be  ;  now, 
after  he  has  been  made  the  talk  of  Paris  for  nine 
days,  and  has  been  given  a  state  dinner  at  Marl- 
borough  House,  and  a  few  stars  for  his  coat,  and 
called  "  cousin,"  he  goes  home  with  no  particular 
disgust  for  his  former  eccentricities  of  mis- gov- 
ernment, but  with  a  quiver  full  of  new  tastes,  de- 
sires, and  ambitions,  and  thereafter  plays  his  role 
of  monarch  with  one  eye  on  the  grand  stands  of 
Europe.  He  wants  their  good  opinion,  but  he 
wants  to  get  it  in  his  own  way — the  old  way.  He 
begins  to  build  railroads  and  hospitals,  but  he  con- 
tinues, after  his  past  custom,  to  draw  the  money 
for  such  improvements  from  licensed  gambling- 
houses  or  from  the  sale  of  opium.  He  has  a 
French  cook,  but  he  retains  the  kurbash  ;  he  puts 
up  telephones,  but  he  does  not  give  up  the  bow- 
string. 

Ismail  was  the  first  Khedive  who  discovered 
that  the  easiest  way  to  get  money  is  to  borrow 
it.  He  found  that  all  one  has  to  do  is  to  sign  a 
paper,  and  you  get  the  money.  It  was  very  easy 
for  Ismail  to  borrow  money,  because  the  credit 
of  Egypt  was  good  and  sound  in  itself,  and  be-' 
cause  foreigners,  who  even  at  that  time  swarmed 


IHK     I.NCI  I>IIMI-N     IN     1,'iYl'l 


'45 


in  Egypt,  knew  that  the  repudiation  of  debts, 
while  possible  in  a  powerful  or  free  government, 
was  not  to  be  feared  from  that  country.  So  there 
began  a  reign  of  extravagance  for  which  history 
has  no  parallel.  If 
"  money  breeds  mon- 
ey," it  is  also  true 
that  those  who  spend 
money  freely  are  giv- 
en more  chances  to 
do  so  than  any  one 
else.  Adventurers, 
charlatans,  rascals  of 
every  climate  and 
every  nationality, 
swarmed  down  upon 
Cairo,  and  fought 
with  one  another 
for  a  chance  to  glut 

themselves  at  the  re-  RIAZ  PASHA, 

past  which  this  reck-  »*»*•****««**„* 

less  profligate  spread 

for  all  comers.  No  man  probably  was  ever  so 
basely  cheated  as  was  Ismail,  or  on  so  magnifi- 
cent a  scale.  And  nothing  remains  but  ruins  to 
show  where  the  money  spent  on  his  own  per- 
sonal pleasure  was  bestowed.  That  other  mag- 
nificent reprobate,  William  M.  Tweed,  left  mon- 
uments like  the  Court  House  to  commemorate 
his  thefts  of  public  money ;  but  Ismail's  pal- 
aces are  falling  in  pieces,  the  rain  has  washed 
the  paint  off  the  boards,  the  tips  of  the  crescents 
19 


146  THE    RULERS   OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

are  broken,  and  great  gardens  filled  with  foun- 
tains and  mosaic  paths  are  choked  with  weeds  and 
covered  with  fallen  leaves  and  the  dirt  and  dust 
of  neglect  and  decay.  You  can  walk  over  long 
marble  floors  which  have  sunk  by  their  own 
weight  through  the  rotten  foundations,  and  see 
yourself  at  full  length  in  bleared  mirrors  sur- 
rounded by  the  gilt  borders  and  blue  silken  cur- 
tains of  the  'Second  Empire.  Ismail  ordered 
these  palaces  as  men  order  hats,  and  threw  them 
away  as  you  toss  an  empty  cartridge  from  a  gun- 
barrel.  And  that  was  all  the  most  of  them  ever 
were,  empty  cartridges,  mere  shells  of  wood  paint- 
ed to  look  like  marble,  and  gilding  and  mirrors, 
as  tasteless  as  the  buildings  at  the  Centennial 
Exposition,  and  lasting  as  long. 

And  yet  they  pleased  him,  and  he  ordered 
more  and  more,  so  that  wherever  his  eye  might 
rest  it  would  fall  upon  a  palace  which  would 
serve  as  a  fitting  covering  for  his  royal  person, 
and  as  a  testimony  to  his  magnificence.  He 
wanted  many,  and  he  wanted  them  at  once.  He 
had  them  built  at  night  by  the  light  of  candles. 
The  Palace  of  Gizeh,  which  is  now  a  museum, 
was  reared  in  this  way  while  Cairo  slept,  and 
at  a  cost  of  twenty- four  million  dollars.  The 
curtains  ordered  for  its  windows  cost  one  thou- 
sand dollars  each,  and  when  it  was  found  that 
they  did  not  fit  the  windows,  the  entire  front  of 
the  building  was  torn  down,  and  a  new  front 
with  windows  to  match  the  curtains  was  put  in 
its  place.  He  built  an  opera-house  as  fine  as 


Till.    KNtll.IMlMKN    IN    KHVIM  147 

that  of  Covcnt  Garden  in  six  months,  and  a  grot- 
to as  dark  and  cool  as  the  Mammoth  Cave,  with 
stalactites  of  painted  rope  and  rocks  of  papier- 
mache  and  mud,  with  its  sides  lined  with  aquari- 
ums, in  which  swam  strange  fish.  The  wind  and 
the  dust  play  through  this  grotto  to-day ;  for  he 
no  sooner  reared  a  palace  in  air  than  he  turned 
from  it  to  some  new  toy.  These  are  the  things 
you  can  see.  You  can  hear  stories  —  some  of 
them  true,  some  of  them  possible — of  things  that 
are  past,  such  as  his  swimming- tanks  where  a 
hundred  of  the  slaves  of  the  harem  bathed  to- 
gether for  his  edification  ;  the  pie  out  of  which, 
when  it  was  opened,  there  stepped  a  ballet-dan- 
cer; and  the  story  of  the  disappearance  of  the 
Pasha  who  grew  too  rich.  This  is,  unfortunately, a 
true  story,  and  not  one  out  of  the  Arabian  Nights. 
This  Pasha  was  invited  by  Ismail  to  see  a  new 
dahabeeyah,  and  never  returned.  But  one  of 
the  attendants  on  the  Khedive  came  back  some 
weeks  later  with  his  finger  bitten  off  at  the  joint. 
He  and  Ismail  alone  know  where  the  Pasha  who 
was  too  rich  has  gone. 

These  extravagances  and  these  eccentricities 
were  all  in  keeping  with  our  idea  of  what  an 
Oriental  despot  should  be,  but  it  would  be  most 
unfair  and  ungenerous  to  give  only  this  side  of 
Ismail's  character.  He  was  a  man  of  much  mind 
and  of  large  ideas,  as  well  as  a  man  with  the 
tastes  of  a  voluptuary,  and  the  means,  for  a  time, 
of  a  Count  of  Monte  Cristo.  It  was  he  who 
built  the  harbor  of  Alexandria ;  and  the  railways 


148  THE    RULERS    OF    THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

and  canals  that  others  have  completed  were 
started  under  his  regime.  All  of  these  things — 
railroads,  palaces,  canals,  and  grottos  made  of 
mud  —  cost  money ;  and  there  were  other  ex- 
penses. Knights  of  industry  and  rascals  of  all 
degrees  extorted  vast  fortunes  from  him  in  in- 
demnities for  supposed  failures  on  his  part  to 
keep  up  with  his  agreements,  and  to  stick  to  the 
letter  of  concessions.  Some  of  these,  like  the  pay- 
ment of  fifteen  million  dollars  to  the  Suez  Canal 
Company,  were  just  enough ;  but  there  was  also 
an  enormous  sum  given  in  backsheesh  to  Turkey 
to  gain  the  consent  of  the  Porte  to  a  proposed 
change  in  the  line  of  succession  and  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  rule  of  primogeniture.  Up  to 
that  time  the  eldest  male  member  of  the  ruling 
family  had  always  succeeded  to  power,  but  Ismail 
obtained  a  firman  from  the  Sultan  allowing  his 
son  to  follow  him.  The  gratification  of  this  nat- 
ural vanity  or  love  of  family  was  not  obtained 
for  the  asking,  and  cost  his  people  dear.  They 
were  already  groaning  under  a  multitude  of 
taxes ;  the  army  was  unpaid ;  the  bureaucracy 
was  rotten  throughout ;  bribery  and  extortion, 
unfair  taxation,  and  open  seizure  of  the  property 
of  others  had  reduced  the  country  almost  to 
bankruptcy.  Ismail  in  sixteen  years  had  brought 
about  a  state  of  things  that  threatened  utter  ruin, 
to  not  only  the  native,  but  to  the  strangers  within 
and  without  the  gates.  Tire  strangers  made  the 
move  for  reform.  I  have  told  this  much  of  Ismail 
not  because  it  is  new  or  unfamiliar,  but  because 


AN   EGYPTIAN   LA.NCKR 


THK    KM. I  I>1I\II  \     l\     1  '.YM  151 

it  shows  how,  through  his  misrule,  the  foreign 
element  was  able  to  obtain  a  footing  upon  the 
shore  of  Egypt,  which  footing  has  now  grown  to 
a  trampling  under  foot  of  what  is  native  and 
properly  Egyptian.  This  entering  wedge  was 
called  the  Dual  Control,  and  France  and  England 
were  appointed  receivers  for  Egypt,  just  as  we 
appoint  receivers  for  a  badly  managed  railroad, 
and  Ismail  was  deposed,  his  son  Tcwfik  taking 
his  place. 

But  although  this  was  the  first  important  and 
most  official  recognition  of  the  right  of  the 
stranger  to  dictate  to  Egypt,  he  had  already  ob- 
tained peculiar  rights  in  Egypt  through  capitula- 
tions, or  those  privileges  granted  in  the  past  to 
foreign  residents  in  Turkey  and  its  dependent 
state  of  Egypt.  In  the  sixteenth  century  the 
foreigners  who  traded  in  these  Oriental  countries 
stood  in  actual  need  of  protection  from  the,  na- 
tives. Because  they  were  foreigners  they  were 
regarded  with  such  lack  of  consideration  that,  in 
order  to  balance  the  disadvantages  of  having 
their  shops  destroyed  and  their  throats  cut,  the 
Sultan  gave  them  certain  privileges — such  as  im- 
munity from  taxation,  immunity  from  arrest,  the 
inviolability  of  domicile,  and  the  exemption  from 
the  jurisdiction  of  the  local  courts. 

These  privileges  were  unimportant  when  the 
foreign  element  in  Constantinople  was  so  little 
and  so  weak  that  the  position  of  the  Chinamen  in 
San  Francisco  in  '49  was  that  of  a  powerful  aris- 
tocracy in  comparison ;  but  the  snake  warmed  at 


152  THE   RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

the  hearth-stone  grew,  and  the  Sultan's  empire 
dwindled,  and  the  privileges  which  were  given  to 
bribe  the  foreigner  to  come  and  to  remain  became 
a  bane  to  Turkey  and  a  curse  to  the  weaker  state 
of  Egypt.  The  inviolability  of  domicile,  for  in- 
stance, is  at  this  very  day  made  use  of  by  foreign- 
ers who  are  carrying  on  some  wickedness  or  who 
have  committed  a  crime  for  which  they  cannot 
be  arrested  by  an  Egyptian  policeman  unless  he  is 
accompanied  by  an  official  representative  of  the 
country  to  which  the  foreigner  belongs.  Let  us 
suppose,  for  example,  that  the  police  of  New  York 
wished  to  raid  a  gambling-house.  This,  I  know, 
is  asking  a  good  deal  of  the  reader's  intelligence, 
but  we  will  suppose  it  to  be  a  gambling- house 
which  has  not  paid  its  assessment  to  the  police 
regularly,  and  which  should  be  given  a  lesson. 
All  that  the  proprietor  of  the  house  would  have  to 
do,  q^id  capitulations  extend  in  New  York,  would 
be  to  lease  the  house  to  an  Italian,  or  to  take  out 
papers  of  naturalization  from  the  British  govern- 
ment. You  can  imagine  the  chagrin  of  an  officer 
of  the  law  who,  when  he  goes  to  make  an  arrest, 
is  confronted  with  a  German  who  says  he  is  an 
Englishman,  and  whose  domicile  is  accordingly 
sacred.  This,  as  you  can  imagine,  would  impede 
the  wheels  of  justice. 

When  I  was  in  Cairo  a  Greek,  who  had  taken 
out  papers  as  an  American  citizen,  flaunted  this 
fact  in  the  faces  of  the  native  police  whenever 
they  came  to  arrest  him  for  keeping  a  gam- 
bling-house. They  applied  to  our  consul -gen- 


Tin:    ENGLISHMEN    IN    K«.YIT 


'53 


oral,  Mr.  E.  C.  Little,  of  Abilene,  Kansas,  who 
so  far  differed  from  the  etiquette  observed  by 
some  other  consuls -general  in  Cairo  as  not  to 
delay  and  not  to  warn  the  criminal.  He  sent 
his  soldiers  to  be  present  at  the  arrest.  The  of- 
fender met  this  by  bringing  forth  another  Amer- 
ican citizen  of  Greek  parentage,  to  whom  he 
claimed  to  have  leased  the  house,  and  whose 
family  were  inside.  Mr.  Little,  feeling  that  the 
American  flag  did  not  look  well  as  a  cloak 
for  gambling-houses, 
and  being  a  young 
man  who  has  assist- 
ed at  county -seat 
fights  and  who  can 
pitch  three  curves, 
said  that  if  the  rou- 
lette tables  were  not 
out  of  the  house  in 
twenty-four  hours  he 
would  himself  break 
them  into  kindling- 
wood  with  an  axe. 
This  incident  shows 
how  the  capitula- 
tions of  the  sixteenth 
century  are  acting  as 
stumbling-blocks  to 

the  Egyptian  of  to-day,  even  when  the  consuls- 
general  are  willing  to  assist  the  native  govern- 
ment, which  is  seldom. 

This  is  not  all.     The  immunity  from  full  taxa- 


TICRANR    PASHA. 

ni^trr  of  Foreign  Affairs 


154        THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITKRRANKAM 

tion,  now  that  the  foreigners  are  among  the  rich- 
est inhabitants  of  Cairo,  is  most  manifestly  unjust; 
and  though  the  mixed  courts  of  an  international 
judiciary  have  done  away  with  trial  of  the  foreign 
resident,  or  lack  of  trial,  in  civil  cases,  by  the  sev- 
eral consuls- general,  the  abuses  of  the  capitula- 
tions are  still  a  grievous  and  most  unjust  imposi- 
tion by  the  great  powers,  ourselves  included,  upon 
a  weaker  one.  To  return  to  the  Dual  Control  and 
to  the  story  of  the  growth  of  the  foreigners'  hold 
on  Egypt.  The  Dual  Control  was  unpopular ;  so 
was  the  foreigner  and  his  capitulations,  who,  wax- 
ing fat  on  the  weaknesses  of  the  country  after  Is- 
mail's debauchery  of  its  strength,  grew  insolent — 
so  insolent  that  the  cry  raised  by  a  general  in  the 
Khedive's  army  of  "  Egypt  for  the  Egyptians"  was 
taken  up,  and  found  expression  in  the  Arabist 
movement  or  rebellion.  Its  leader  was  Arabi 
Pasha.  He  wanted  what  the  Know -Nothing 
party  of  America  wanted  —  his  country  for  his 
countrymen.  What  else  he  wanted  for  himself 
does  not  matter  here.  He  was,  in  the  eyes  of 
the  Khedive,  a  rebel.  In  the  eyes  of  some  of  the 
people  he  was  the  would-be  preserver  of  his  coun- 
try against  the  plague  of  the  foreign  invasion. 

The  trouble  began  at  Alexandria,  where  the 
excited  people  attacked  the  foreign  residents,  kill- 
ing some,  and  destroying  valuable  property.  Men- 
of-war  of  the  two  powers  represented  in  the  Dual 
Control  had  already  arrived  to  put  down  the  re- 
bellion. When  the  riot  on  shore  was  at  its  height, 
the  English  war-vessels  bombarded  the  city.  The 


TUK    KNCMSHMKN     IX     K.YM  155 

bombarding  of  Alexandria  was  war,  but  it  was 
not  magnificent.  There  are  certain  things  made 
to  be  bombarded — forts  and  ships  of  war — but 
cities  are  not  built  for  that  purpose  or  with  that 
ultimate  end  in  view.  The  English  people,  as 
a  people,  however,  regret  the  bombardment  of 
Alexandria  as  much  as  any  one.  The  French 
war -vessels,  for  their  part,  refused  to  join  the 
bombardment,  and  so  were  requested  by  the 
English  admiral  to  sail  away  and  give  the  other 
half  of  the  Dual  Control  a  clear  field.  Different 
people  give  you  different  reasons  for  the  depart- 
ure of  the  French  fleet  at  this  crisis.  Some  say 
that  M.  Clemenceau,  who  hated  M.  Freycinet  and 
his  policy,  possibly  raised  the  cry  of  the  German 
wolf  on  the  frontier,  and  pointed  out  the  danger 
at  home  if  the  army  and  navy  were  engaged 
otherwise  than  in  protecting  the  border.  Others 
say  that,  like  the  good  one  of  the  two  robbers  in 
the  Babes  in  the  Wood,  one  of  the  Dual  Control 
drew  the  line  at  murder  or  at  the  bombardment 
of  a  country  she  was  supposed  to  protect.  Plun- 
dering the  Egyptians  was  possible,  but  not  bom- 
barding their  city.  They  stopped  at  that.  The 
English  followed  up  the  bombardment  of  Alex- 
andria by  the  battle  of  Tel-el-Kebir,  which  ended 
the  rebellion.  The  Citadel  of  Cairo  surrendered 
at  their  approach,  and  the  Khedive's  rule  was 
a;^ain  undisturbed.  The  English  remained,  how- 
ever, to  "  restore  order,"  and  to  see  to  the  "  or- 
ganization  of  proper  means  for  the  maintenance 
of  the  Khedive's  authority."  They  have  been 


156  THE    RULERS   OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

doing  that  now  for  ten  years,  and  it  is  interesting 
to  note  that  "they  have  made  so  little  progress 
that  the  last  "  disorder  "  in  Cairo  was  due  to  the 
action  of  the  British  consul-general  himself  in 
allowing  the  young  Khedive  just  twenty -four 
hours  in  which  to  dismiss  one  of  his  cabinet. 
This-can  hardly  be  described  as  "  maintaining  the 
authority  of  the  Khedive,"  which  the  English 
had  promised  to  do. 

After  the  battle  of  Tel-el-Kebir  Great  Britain 
stood  undoubtedly  in  the  position  of  the  savior  of 
the  Khedive  if  not  of  Egypt.  Her  soldiers  had 
crushed  the  rebellion,  and  as  she  had  sent  her 
Only  General  and  one  of  the  royal  family  and 
many  thousands  of  good  men  to  do  it,  and  as 
she  had  lost  not  only  men,  but  money,  she 
thought  she  deserved  something  in  return.  The 
something  she  has  taken  in  return  has  been 
taken  gradually,  and  is  the  control  of  Egypt  at 
the  present  day.  It  is  possible  that  had  the 
English  not  lost  many  more  men  and  much  more 
money  in  the  campaign  in  the  Soudan,  which  fol- 
lowed immediately  after  the  suppression  of  Arabi, 
they  might  not  have  gone  so  far  as  they  have  gone 
in  settling  themselves  in  Egypt.  But  there  was 
a  not  unnatural  feeling  that  the  Soudan  cam- 
paign, which  had  cost  so  much,  and  which  was  a 
failure  in  all  but  in  showing  the  bravery  of  the 
British  troops,  ought  to  be  paid  for,  or  made  up 
to  the  English  in  some  way.  I  should  like  to  go 
into  the  story  of  this  most  picturesque  and  heroic 
of  campaigns,  but  it  would  require  a  book  by  it- 


A  CAMEL  CORI'S   PATROL  AT  WADI    HAI.KA 


IM I      KM. I  I-HMKN     IN     KliVIM  159 

self.  Its  liistory  is  briefly  this  :  The  religious  and 
military  chieftain  known  as  "  the  Mahdi,"  shortly 
after  the  defeat  of  Arabi,  threatened  all  Egypt 
from  the  Soudan,  which  rose  under  his  leadership. 
General  Hicks,  an  Englishman,  with  ten  thousand 
men,  in  the  service  of  the  Khedive,  was  sent 
against  him.  He  was  killed,  and  most  of  the 
troops  with  him.  The  English,  who  were  at  that 
time  the  only  power  in  Egypt  with  authority  of 
any  sort  back  of  it,  and  who  were  virtually  in 
control,  felt  that  they  should  take  the  responsi- 
bilities of  their  position  as  well  as  its  benefits, 
and  avenge  the  massacre,  drive  back  the  Mahdi's 
forces,  and,  if  possible,  crush  him  and  them  for 
all  time.  The  campaign  was  later  further  com- 
plicated by  the  presence  at  Khartoom  of  Major- 
General  C.  G.  Gordon,  who  had  gone  there  to  lead 
back  in  safety  the  Egyptian  troops  still  remain- 
ing in  the  Soudan.  He  was,  after  his  arrival  at 
K  hartoom,  virtually  a  prisoner  at  that  place,  which 
is  a  mud  city  on  the  banks  of  the  Nile  far  above 
the  fifth  cataract.  The  attempts  to  rescue  him 
and  to  suppress  the  Mahdi  were  equally  unsuc- 
cessful. 

This  is,  in  a  few  words,  the  story  of  a  cam- 
paign which  has  been  unequalled  within  the  last 
twenty  years  in  picturesqueness,  heroism,  and 
dramatic  surprises.  It  had  been  said  that  the  old 
days  of  personal  bravery,  of  hand-to-hand  slaugh- 
ter, and  of  the  attack  and  defence  of  man  against 
man,  were  at  an  end  ;  that  owing  to  the  new 
weapons  of  war,  by  which  an  enemy  can  be  at- 


l6o  THE    RULERS    OF    THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

tacked  when  several  miles  distant  from  the  at- 
tacking party,  when  the  pressing  of  an  electric 
button  destroys  an  army  corps,  and  when  turn- 
ing a  handle  will  send  three  hundred  bullets  a 
minute  into  a  mass  of  infantry,  the  necessity  for 
personal  courage  was  over.  But  seldom  in  his- 
tory has  there  been  as  fierce  personal  encounters 
as  in  the  Soudan,  or  as  unusual  methods  of  war- 
fare. On  the  one  hand  were  the  naked  support- 
ers of  the  Mahdi,  armed  with  their  spears  and 
knives,  and  protected  only  by  bull-hide  shields, 
but  actuated  by  a  religious  fanaticism  that  drove 
them  exulting  at  their  enemies,  and  with  no 
fear  of  death,  but  with  the  belief  that  through  it 
they  would  gain  joyous  and  proud  immortality. 
Against  them  were  the  British  troops,  outnum- 
bered ten  to  one,  with  hundreds  of  miles  of  sandy 
desert  before,  behind,  and  on  every  side  of  them, 
cut  off  from  communication  with  the  outside 
world,  in  a  country  barren  and  unfamiliar,  and 
attacked  by  tens  of  thousands,  who  came  when 
they  pleased  and  where  they  pleased,  rising  as 
swiftly  as  a  sand-storm  rises,  and  disappearing 
again  as  suddenly  into  the  desert. 

When  I  was  in  Cairo  I  was  told  of  one  of  the 
Mahdi's  men  who  continually  rushed  at  a  British 
square  during  an  engagement  holding  his  shield 
clear  of  his  body  as  he  advanced  to  throw  a  spear, 
and  then  retreated  again.  This  looked  like  the 
worst  form  of  foolhardiness  to  the  English,  until 
they  saw  that  he  was  protecting  with  his  shield 
his  little  boy,  who  was  hiding  behind  it,  and  that 


THE    ENGLISHMEN    IN    KdVI'T 


H.   H.    ABBAS    II. 

Khedive  of  Egypt 


when  the  chance  of- 
fered, this  child,  who 
could  not  have  been 
more  than  seven,  and 
who  was  as  naked  of 
protection  as  his  fa- 
ther, would  throw  a 
spear  of  his  own.  The 
father  was  wounded 
four  times,  but  each 
time  the  bullet  struck 
him  he  only  shook 
himself,  as  a  dog 
shakes  off  water,  and 

once  more  rushed  forward.  When  he  fell  for  the 
last  time  the  boy  tumbled  across  him,  unconscious 
from  a  wound  in  his  thigh.  The  surgeons  dressed 
this  wound  and  bandaged  it;  but  when  the  child 
came  to  and  saw  what  they  had  done,  he  leaped  up 
and  tore  the  clothes  from  around  him,  and  then, 
as  the  blood  from  the  reopened  wound  ran  out, 
fell  over  backwards  dead.  The  English  officer 
who  told  this  story  asked  if  fighting  such  men 
could  be  considered  agreeable  work  from  any 
point  of  view. 

But  the  Soudan  is  only  of  interest  here  as  show- 
ing how,  having  lost  so  much  through  it,  the 
Hritish  did  not  feel  more  inclined  than  before  to 
evacuate  Egypt,  although  there  were  many  who 
thought,  as  a  few  still  think,  that  Egypt  has  cost 
them  too  much  already,  and  more  than  they  can 
ever  get  back.  The  loss  of  Gordon  was  perhaps 


162  THE    RULERS   OF    THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

the  disaster  of  all  the  most  keenly  felt.  How 
keenly  is  shown  partly  by  the  statue  the  English 
have  placed  to  him  in  Trafalgar  Square,  sur- 
rounded by  their  kings  and  greatest  generals.  It 
shows  him  with  one  foot  placed  on  the  battle- 
ment of  Khartoom,  with  his  arms  folded,  and  with 
the  head  thrown  slightly  forward,  looking  out,  as 
he  had  done  for  so  many  weary  months,  for  the 
relief  that  came  too  late.  This  monument  is  a 
reproach  to  those  whose  uncertainty  of  mind  and 
purpose  cost  Gordon  his  life.  It  was  doing  a 
brave  thing  to  put  it  up  in  a  public  place,  being, 
as  it  is,  a  standing  reminder  of  the  neglect  and 
half-heartedness  that  lost  a  valuable  life,  and  one 
that  had  been  risked  again  and  again  for  his 
country.  It  is  not  only  a  monument  to  General 
Gordon,  but  to  the  English  people,  who  have  had 
the  courage  to  admit  in  bronze  and  stone  that 
they  were  wrong. 

For  the  last  ten  years  the  English  have  been  as 
tardy  in  getting  out  of  Egypt  as  they  were  in 
going  after  Gordon  into  the  Soudan.  They  have 
repeatedly  declared  their  intention  of  evacuating 
the  country,  not  only  in  answer  to  questions  in 
the  House,  but  in  answer  to  the  inquiries  of  for- 
eign powers.  But  they  are  still  there.  They 
have  not  been  idle  while  there,  and  they  have  ac- 
complished much  good,  and  have  brought  bene- 
fits innumerable  to  Egypt.  They  have  improved 
her  systems  of  irrigation,  upon  which  the  pros- 
perity of  the  land  depends,  have  strengthened  her 
army,  have  done  away  with  the  corvee,  or  tax 


i  MI-.   KM;I.I>MMKN   IN   M«;YI»T  163 

paid  on  labor,  and  with  the  kurbash,  or  whip  used 
in  punishment,  and,  what  is  much  the  most  won- 
derful, they  have  brought  her  out  of  ruin  into 
such  a  condition  of  prosperity  that  she  not  only 
pays  the  interest  on  her  enormous  debt,  but  has  a 
little  left  over  for  internal  improvements.  There 
has  also  been  a  marked  change  for  the  better  in 
the  condition  of  the  courts  of  justice,  and  there 
has  been  an  extension  of  a  railroad  up  the  Nile 
as  far  as  Sirgeh. 

But  the  English  to-day  not  only  want  credit 
for  having  done  all  this,  but  they  want  credit  for 
having  done  it  unselfishly  and  without  hope  or 
thought  of  reward,  and  solely  for  the  good  of 
mankind  and  of  Egypt. in  particular.  They  re- 
mind me  of  those  of  the  G.  A.  R.  who  not  only 
want  pensions  and  medals,  but  to  be  considered 
unselfish  saviors  of  their  country  in  her  hour  of 
need.  There  is  no  reason  why  a  man  should  not 
be  held  in  honor  for  risking  his  life  for  his  coun- 
try's sake,  and  honors,  if  he  wants  them,  should 
be  heaped  upon  him,  but  not  money  too.  He 
either  served  his  country  because  he  was  loyal 
and  brave,  or  because  he  wanted  money  in  return 
for  taking  certain  risks.  Let  him  have  either  the 
honors  or  the  money,  but  he  should  not  be  so 
greedy  as  to  want  both.  England  has  made  a 
very  good  thing  out  of  Egypt,  and  she  has  not 
yet  got  all  she  will  get,  but  she  wants  the  world 
to  forget  that  and  look  upon  her  as  an  unselfish 
and  enlightened  nation  that  is  helping  a  less  pros- 
perous and  less  powerful  people  to  get  upon  their 


164          THE    RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

feet  again.  Of  course  it  is  none  of  our  business 
(at  least  it  is  our  policy  to  say  so)  when  England 
stalks  forth  like  a  roaring  lion  seeking  what  she 
may  devour  all  over  the  world.  Americans  travel 
chiefly  upon  the  Continent,  and  unless  they  go 
into  out-of-the-way  corners  of  the  world  they  have 
no  idea  how  little  there  is  left  of  it  that  has  not 
been  seized  by  the  people  of  Great  Britain.  For 
my  own  part  I  find  one  grows  a  little  tired  of 
getting  down  and  sailing  forth  and  landing  again 
always  under  the  shadow  of  the  British  flag.  If 
the  United  States  should  begin  with  Hawaii  and 
continue  to  annex  other  people's  property,  we 
should  find  that  almost  all  of  the  best  corner  lots 
and  post -office  sites  of  the  world  have  been 
already  pre-empted.  Senator  Wolcott  once  said 
to  Senator  Quay :  "  I  understand,  Quay,  you  want 
the  chairmanship  of  the  Library  Committee.  You 
seem  to  want  the  earth  ;  if  you  don't  look  out  you 
will  interfere  with  my  plans." 

If  the  United  States  had  taken  away  the  little 
princess's  island  from  her  and  continued  to  plunder 
weaker  nations,  she  would  have  found  that  Eng- 
land wants  the  earth  too,  and  that  she  is  in  a  fair 
way  of  getting  it  if  some  one  does  not  stop  her 
very  soon.  There  are  a  number  of  good  people  in 
England  who  believe  that  for  the  last  ten  years 
their  countrymen  have  spent  their  time  and  money 
in  redeeming  Egypt  as  a  form  of  missionary  work, 
and  there  are  others  quite  as  naive  who  put  the 
whole  thing  in  a  word  by  saying,  "  What  would  we 
do  with  our  younger  sons  if  it  was  not  for  Egypt  ?" 


THE   GUN   MLLK   UK   THE   MULE   BAIII.K\ 


THE   ENGLISHMEN    IN    EGYPT  167 

Three-fourths  of  the  officers  in  the  army  of  the 
Khedive  are  English  boys,  who  rank  as  second 
lieutenants  at  home  and  as  majors  in  Egypt. 
They  are  paid  just  twice  what  they  are  paid  in 
the  English  army,  and  it  is  the  Khedive  who 
pays  them  and  not  the  English.  In  this  way 
England  obtains  three  things :  she  is  saved  the 
cost  of  supporting  that  number  of  officers;  she 
gets  the  benefit  of  their  experience  in  Egypt, 
which  is  an  excellent  training-school,  at  the  ex- 
pense of  the  Egyptians ;  and  she  at  the  same 
time  controls  the  Egyptian  army  by  these  same 
officers,  and  guards  her  own  interests  at  Egypt's 
cost.  And  as  if  this  were  not  enough,  she  plants 
an  Army  of  Occupation  upon  the  country,  and 
with  it  menaces  the  native  authority.  The  irri- 
gation of  Egypt  has  of  late  been  carried  on  by 
Englishmen  entirely  and  paid  for  by  Egypt ; 
her  railroads  are  built  by  the  English ;  her  big 
contracts  are  given  out  to  English  firms  and  to 
English  manufacturers;  and  the  railroad  which 
will  be  built  to  Kosseir  on  the  Red  Sea  may 
have  been  designed  in  Egypt's  interest  to  carry 
wheat,  or  it  may  have  been  planned  to  carry 
troops  to  the  Red  Sea  in  the  event  of  the 
seizure  of  the  Suez  Canal  or  of  any  other  im- 
pediment to  the  shortest  route  to  India.  We 
may  not  believe  that  the  Egyptians  are  capable 
of  governing  themselves,  we  may  believe  that  it 
is  written  that  others  than  themselves  shall  al- 
ways rule  them  and  their  country,  but  we  must 
prefer  that  whoever  do  this  should  declare  them- 


l68  THE   RULERS    OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

selves  openly,  and  act  as  conquerors  who  come 
and  remain  as  conquerors,  and  not  as  "advisers" 
and  restorers  of  order.  Napoleon  came  to  Cairo 
with  flags  flying  and  drums  beating  openly  as  an 
enemy ;  he  did  not  come  in  the  disguise  of  a 
missionary  or  an  irrigation  expert. 

And  there  is  always  the  question  whether  if 
left  alone  the  Egyptians  of  the  present  day  could 
not  govern  themselves.  Those  of  the  Egyptians 
I  met  who  were  in  authority  are  not  men  who 
are  likely  to  return  to  the  debauchery  and  mis- 
rule of  Ismail.  They  would  be  big  men  in  any 
country;  they  are  cultivated,  educated  gentle- 
men, who  have  served  in  different  courts  or  on 
many  important  diplomatic  missions,  and  whose 
tastes  and  ambitions  are  as  creditable  and  as 
broad  as  are  those  of  their  English  contempo- 
raries. 

The  two  most  prominent  advisers  of  the  Khe- 
dive at  present  are  his  Prime  -  minister,  Riaz 
Pasha,  and  his  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  Ti- 
grane  Pasha.  The  first  of  these  is  a  Turk,  the 
second  an  Armenian  and  a  Christian.  It  is  told 
of  Riaz  that  he  was  brought  to  Egypt  when  a 
boy  as  a  slave.  A  man  who  can  rise  from  such  a 
beginning  to  be  Prime-minister  must  have  some- 
thing in  him.  He  showed  his  spirit  and  his  de- 
sire for  his  country's  good  in  the  time  of  Ismail, 
whose  extravagances  both  he  and  Nubar  Pasha 
strenuously  opposed,  and  his  aid  to  the  English 
in  establishing  Egyptian  finance  on  a  firmer  foot- 
ing was  ready  and  invaluable.  He  has  held  al- 


THE    ENGLISHMEN    IN    EGYPT 


,69 


most  every  position  in  the  cabinet  of  Egypt,  and 
is  not  too  old  a  man  to  learn  new  methods,  and  if 
left  alone  is  experienced  and  accomplished  enough 
as  a  statesman  to  manage  for  himself. 

Tigrane  Pasha  struck  me  as  being  more  of  a 
diplomat  than  a  statesman,  but  he  showed  his 
strength  by  the  fact  that  he  understood  the  weak- 
points  of  the  Egyptians  as  well  as  their  virtues. 
It  is  not  the  enthusiast  who  believes  that  all  in 
his  country  is  perfect  who  is  the  best  patriot. 
To  say  that  such  a  man  as  this — a  man  who  has 
a  better  knowledge  of  many  different  govern- 
ments than  half  of  the  English  cabinet  have  of 
their  own,  and  who  wishes  the  best  for  his  Khe- 
dive and  his  country — needs  the  advice  or  support 
of  an  English  resident  minister,  is  as  absurd  as  to 
say  that  the  French 
cabinet  should  gov- 
ern themselves  by 
the  manifestoes  of 
the  Comte  de  Paris. 
These  men  are  not 
barbarians  nor  des- 
pots; they  have  not 
gained  their  place  in 
the  world  by  favor  or 
inheritance.  Their 
homes  are  as  rich  in 
treasures  of  art  and 
history  and  literature 
as  are  the  homes  of 
Lord  Rosebery  or  Sir  ^  EnKlteh  ,»„,„,»., 


170          THE    RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

Henry  Drummond  Wolff,  and  if  they  care  for 
their  country  and  the  authority  of  their  Khedive, 
it  is  certainly  hard  that  they  may  not  have  the 
right  of  serving  both  undisturbed. 

The  Khedive  himself  has  been  very  generally 
represented  through  the  English  press  as  a  "  sulky 
boy  "  who  does  not  know  what  is  best  for  him. 
It  is  just  as  easy  to  describe  him  as  a  plucky  boy 
who  wishes  to  govern  his  own  country  and  his 
own  people  in  his  own  way.  And  not  only  is  he 
not  allowed  to  do  this,  but  he  is  treated  with  a 
lack  of  consideration  by  his  protectors  which  adds 
insult  to  injury,  and  makes  him  appear  as  having 
less  authority  than  is  really  his.  He  might  very 
well  say  to  Lord  Cromer,  "  It  was  all  very  well  to 
dissemble  your  love,  but  why  did  you  kick  me 
down-stairs?" 

Sir  Evelyn  Baring,  now  Lord  Cromer,  and  the 
ruling  figure  in  Egypt,  has  served  his  country  as 
faithfully  and  as  successfully  as  any  man  in  her 
debt  to-day.  He  has  been  in  Egypt  from  the 
beginning  of  these  ten  years,  and  he  has  been 
given  almost  unlimited  power  and  authority  by 
his  own  country,  of  which  his  nominal  position  of 
Consul-General  and  Diplomatic  Agent  is  no  cri- 
terion. He  is  a  typical  Englishman  in  appear- 
ance, broad-shouldered  and  big  all  over,  with  a 
smooth-shaven  face,  and  the  look  of  having  just 
come  fresh  from  a  bath.  In  conversation  he 
thinks  much  more  of  what  he  has  to  say  than  of 
how  he  says  it ;  by  that  I  mean  that  he  is  direct, 
and  even  abrupt ;  the  Egyptians  found  him  most 


THE    ENGLISHMEN    IN    EGYPT  17! 

unpleasantly  so.  But  were  he  more  tactful,  he 
would  probably  have  been  better  liked  person- 
ally, but  would  not  have  succeeded  in  doing  what 
he  has  done  so  well. 

I  do  not  like  what  he  has  done,  but  I  want  to 
be  fair  in  showing  that  for  the  work  he  was  sent 
to  do  he  is  probably  the  best  man  England  could 
have  selected.  A  man  less  self-reliant  might 
have  feared  to  compromise  himself  with  home 
authorities,  and  would  have  temporized  and  lost 
where  Lord  Cromer  bullied  and  browbeat  and 
won.  He  is  a  very  remarkable  man.  He  stud- 
ies for  a  half-hour  every  day  after  breakfast,  and 
plays  tennis  in  the  afternoon.  When  he  is  in 
his  own  room,  with  a  pipe  in  his  mouth,  he 
can  talk  more  interestingly  and  with  more  exact 
knowledge  of  Egypt  than  any  man  in  the  world, 
and  your  admiration  for  him  is  unbounded.  In 
the  rooms  of  the  legation,  on  the  contrary,  or, 
again,  when  advising  a  minister  of  the  Khedive 
or  the  Khedive  himself,  he  can  be  as  intensely 
disagreeable  in  his  manner  and  as  powerfully 
aggressive  as  a  polar-bear.  During  the  last  so- 
called  "  crisis  "  he  gave  the  Khedive  twenty-four 
hours  in  which  to  dismiss  his  Prime -minister. 
He  did  this  with  the  assurance  from  the  English 
Foreign  Office  that  the  home  government  would 
support  him.  He  then  cabled  with  one  hand  to 
Malta  for  troops  and  with  the  other  stopped  the 
Black  Watch  at  Aden  on  their  way  to  India,  and 
called  them  back  to  Cairo,  after  which  he  went 
out  in  full  sight  of  the  public  and  banged  tennis 


172  THE   RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

balls  about  until  sunset.  A  man  who  can  call 
out "  forty,  love  !"  "  forty,  fifteen  !"  in  a  calm  voice 
two  hours  after  sending  an  ultimatum  to  a  Khe- 
dive and  disarranging  the  movements  of  six  thou- 
sand of  her  Majesty's  troops  will  get  what  he 
wants  in  the  end,  and  a  boy  of  eighteen  is  hardly 
a  fair  match  for  him. 

As  I  have  said,  the  English  press  have  mis- 
represented the  young  Khedive  in  many  ways. 
He  is,  in  the  first  place,  much  older  both  in  ap- 
pearance and  manner  and  thought  than  his  age 
would  suggest,  and  if  he  is  sulky  to  Englishmen 
it  is  not  to  be  wondered  at.  They  could  hard- 
ly expect  his  Highness  to  regard  them  as  seri- 
ously as  his  friends  as  they  regard  themselves. 
The  Khedive  gave  me  a  private  audience  at  the 
Abdine  Palace  while  I  was  in  Cairo,  and  from 
what  he  said  then  and  from  what  others  who  are 
close  to  him  told  me  of  him,  I  obtained  a  very 
different  idea  of  his  personality  than  I  had  re- 
ceived from  the  English. 

He  struck  me  as  being  distinctly  obstinate — a 
characteristic  which  is  so  marked  in  our  President 
that  it  can  only  be  considered  one  of  the  qualifi- 
cations for  success,  and  is  probably  the  quality  in 
the  Khedive  which  the  English  describe  as  sulki- 
ness.  What  I  liked  in  him  most  was  his  pride 
in  his  army  and  in  the  Egyptian  people  as  Egyp- 
tians. It  is  always  well  that  a  ruler  should  be  so 
enthusiastic  over  what  is  his  own  that  he  shows 
it  even  to  the  casual  stranger,  for  if  he  exhibits  it 
to  him,  how  much  more  will  he  show  it  to  his 


THE   ENGLISHMEN    IN    EGYPT  175 

people !  The  Khedive  has  gentle  tastes,  and  is 
said  to  find  his  amusement  in  his  garden  and 
among  flowers  and  on  the  farm  lands  of  his  es- 
tates ;  he  speaks  several  languages  very  well,  and 
dresses  and  looks — except  for  the  fez  and  his  at- 
tendants— like  any  other  young  man  of  twenty- 
three  or  twenty-four  in  Paris  or  New  York.  His 
ministers,  who  know  him  best,  describe  him  as 
having  a  high  spirit,  and  one  that,  as  he  grows 
older  and  will  be  guided  by  greater  experience, 
will  lead  him  to  firmer  authority  for  his  own  good 
and  for  the  good  of  his  people. 

One  remark  of  the  Khedive's  which  is  of  inter- 
est to  Americans  was  to  the  effect  that  the  offi- 
cers in  his  army  who  had  been  trained  by  Stone 
Bey,  and  those  other  American  officers  who  en- 
tered the  Egyptian  army  after  the  end  of  our  Civil 
War,  were,  in  his  opinion,  the  best-trained  men  in 
their  particular  department  in  his  army.  This  is 
the  topographical  work,  and  the  making  of  maps 
and  drawings ;  but  those  Americans  who  are  in 
charge  of  Egyptian  troops  on  the  frontier  are  also 
well  esteemed.  It  is  the  English,  however,  who 
have  made  the  fighting  part  of  the  army  what  it 
is.  Before  they  came  the  troops  were  unpaid, 
and  badly  treated  by  their  officers,  but  now  the 
infantry  and  the  camel  corps  and  artillery  have 
no  trouble  in  getting  recruits. 

The  Egyptian  is  not  a  natural  fighter,  as  is  the 
Soudanese,  who  fights  for  love  of  it,  but  he  has 
shown  lately  that  when  properly  officered  and 
trained  and  well  treated,  he  can  defend  a  position 


176  THE    RULERS    OF    THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

or  attack  boldly  if  led  boldly.  I  suggested  to  the 
Khedive  that  he  should  borrow  some  of  our  offi- 
cers, those  who  have  succeeded  so  well  with  the 
negroes  of  the  Ninth  Cavalry  and  with  the  Ind- 
ians, for  it  seemed  to  me  that  this  would  be  of 
benefit  to  both  the  officers  and  the  Egyptian 
soldier.  It  was  this  suggestion  that  called  forth 
the  Khedive's  admiration  for  the  Americans  of 
his  army ;  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  English 
would  never  allow  officers  of  any  other  nation- 
ality than  their  own  to  control  even  a  company 
of  the  Egyptian  army.  They  cannot  turn  out 
those  foreigners  who  are  already  in,  but  they  can 
dictate  as  to  who  shall  come  hereafter,  and  they 
fill  all  the  good  billets  with  their  own  people ; 
and  if  there  is  one  thing  an  Englishman  appar- 
ently holds  above  all  else,  it  is  a"  good  billet."  I 
know  a  good  many  English  officers  who  would 
rather  be  stationed  where  there  was  a  chance  of 
their  taking  part  in  what  they  call  a  "  show,"  and 
what  we  would  grandly  call  a  "  battle,"  than  dwell 
at  ease  on  the  staff  of  General  Wolseley  himself ; 
but,  on  the  other  hand,  if  I  were  to  give  a  list  of 
all  the  subalterns  who  have  applied  to  me  for 
"  good  billets  in  America,"  where  they  seem  to 
think  fortunes  grow  on  hedges,  half  the  regimen- 
tal colors  from  London  to  Malta  would  fade  with 
shame. 

And  Egypt  is  full  of  "good  billets."  It  is 
true  the  English  have  made  them  good,  and 
they  were  not  worth  much  before  the  English 
restored  order;  but  because  you  have  humanely 


THE    ENGLISHMEN    IN    EGYPT  177 

stopped  a  runaway  coach  from  going  over  a  prec- 
ipice, that  is  no  reason  why  you  should  take 
possession  of  it  and  fill  it  both  inside  and  out 
with  your  own  friends  and  relations.  That  is 
what  England  has  done  with  the  Egyptian  coach 
which  Ismail  drove  to  the  brink  of  bankruptcy. 

It  is  true  the  Khedive  still  sits  on  the  box  and 
holds  the  reins,  but  Lord  Cromer  sits  beside  him 
and  holds  the  whip. 


VI 
MODERN  ATHENS 

ERHAPS  the  greatest  charm  of  Ath- 
ens and  of  the  islands  and  moun- 
tains round  about  it  lies  in  their 
power  to  lure  back  your  belief  in 
a  great  many  fine  people  of  whose 
remarkable  deeds  you  had  grown  sceptical — of 
whose  existence  even  you  had  begun  to  doubt. 
It  is  something  very  serious  when  one  loses  faith 
in  so  delightful  a  young  man  as  Theseus,  and  it  is 
worth  while  sailing  under  the  lee  shores  of  Crete, 
where  he  killed  the  Minotaur,  if  for  no  other  pur- 
pose than  to  have  your  admiration  for  him  re- 
stored. If  we  could  only  be  as  sure  of  restoring 
by  travel  all  of  those  other  people  of  whom  our 
elders  ceased  telling  us  when  we  left  the  nursery, 
I  would  head  an  expedition  to  the  north  pole, 
not  to  discover  open  seas  and  altitudes  and 
eclipses  and  such  weighty  things,  but  to  locate 
that  nice  and  kindly  old  gentleman,  and  his  toy 
store  and  his  reindeer,  who  used  to  come  at 
Christmas- time,  and  who  has  stopped  coming 
since  I  left  school.  It  is  certainly  worth  while 


MODERN    ATHENS 


'79 


going  all  the  way  to 
Greece  to  see  the 
Hill  of  the  Nymphs, 
and  the  very  cave 
where  Pan  used  to 
sleep  in  the  hot  mid- 
day, and  to  thrill 
over  the  four  cross- 
roads and  the  high, 
gloomy  pass  where 
the  Sphinx  lay  in 
wait  for  CEdipus 
with  her  cruel  claws 
and  inscrutable 
smile. 

The  story  that 
must  always  strike 
every  child  as  most 
sad  and  unsatisfac- 
tory is  the  one  which 
tells  us  how  the  fa- 
ther of  Theseus  killed  himself  when  his  son  came 
sailing  back  triumphant,  and  so  gallantly  engaged 
in  entertaining  the  beautiful  Athenian  maidens 
whose  lives  he  had  saved  that  he  forgot  to  hoist 
the  white  sails,  and  caused  his  father  to  throw 
himself  off  the  high  rocks  in  despair. 

This  used  to  appeal  to  me  as  one  of  the  most 
pathetic  incidents  in  history ;  but  as  time  wore 
on  my  sympathy  for  the  father  and  indignation 
against  Theseus  passed  away,  and  I  forgot  about 
them  both.  But  when  they  point  out  where  the 


GREEK  SOLDIER  IN  THE  NATIONAL 
(ALBANIAN)  UNIFORM 


180          THE   RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

black  sails  were  first  seen  entering  the  bay,  and 
you  stand  on  the  rock  from  which  the  people 
watched  for  Theseus,  and  from  which  his  father 
threw  himself  down,  you  feel  just  as  sorry,  and 
you  rebel  just  as  strongly  against  that  morbid 
anticlimax,  as  you  did  when  you  first  read  the 
story  in  knickerbockers.  It  seems  almost  too  sad 
to  be  true. 

They  had  such  a  delightful  way  of  mixing  up 
the  histories  of  gods  and  mortals  in  those  days 
that  the  imaginative  person  who  visits  Athens 
will  find  himself  gazing  as  gratefully  and  as  open- 
eyed  at  the  rocks  in  which  the  Centaur  hid  as 
at  those  from  which  Demosthenes  delivered  his 
philippics,  just  as  in  London  the  room  at  the 
Charter  House  where  Colonel  Newcome  said 
"Adsum "  for  the  last  time  is  much  more  real 
than  that  room  in  Edinburgh  in  which  Rizzio  was 
killed,  or  as  the  rock  from  which  Monte  Cristo 
sprang,  at  the  base  of  the  Chateau  d'lf,  is  so 
much  more  actual  than  the  entire  field  of  Water- 
loo. It  is  hard  to  know  just  which  was  real  and 
which  a  delightful  myth  ;  and  yet  there  has  been 
so  little  change  in  Greece  since  then  that  you  are 
brought  nearer  to  Alcibiades  and  to  Pericles  than 
you  can  ever  come,  in  this  world  at  least,  to  Dr. 
Johnson  and  Dean  Swift.  You  cannot  recreate 
Grub  Street  and  the  debtors'  prison,  but  Euboea 
still  "  looks  on  Marathon,  and  Marathon  on  the 
sea,"  and,  if  you  are  presumptuous,  you  can 
strut  up  and  down  the  rocky  plateau  from  which 
Demosthenes  spoke,  or  take  your  seat  in  one  of 


M'M)ERN    ATH 


181 


the  marble  chairs  of  the  Theatre  of  Dionysus, 
and  pretend  you  are  a  worthy  citizen  of  Athens 
listening  to  a  satire  of  Sophocles. 

The   quiet   and    fresh   cleanliness   of   modern 
Athens  comes  to  you  after  the  roar  and  dirt  of 


GREEK    PEASANT   GIRL 


Cairo's  narrow  lanes  and  dusty  avenues  like  the 
touch  of  damask  table  linen  and  silver  after  the 
greasy  oil -cloth  of  a  Mediterranean  coasting 
steamer.  It  is  quiet,  sunny,  and  well-bred.  You 
do  not  fight  your  way  through  legions  of  donkey- 


182  THE    RULERS    OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

boys  and  dragomans,  nor  are  your  footsteps 
echoed  by  swarms  of  guides  and  beggars.  It  is  a 
pretty  city,  with  the  look  of  a  water-color.  The 
houses  are  a  light  yellow,  and  the  shutters  a 
watery  green,  and  the  tile  roofs  a  delicate  red,  and 
the  sky  above  a  blue  seldom  shown  to  ordinary 
mortals,  but  reserved  for  the  eyes  of  painters  and 
poets,  who  have  a  sort  of  second  sight,  and  so  are 
always  seeing  it  and  using  it  for  a  background. 
Athens  is  a  very  new  city,  with  new  streets  and 
new  public  buildings,  and  a  new  King  and  Royal 
Palace.  It  is  like  a  little  miniature.  There  is  a 
little  army,  chiefly  composed  of  officers,  and  a 
miniature  cabinet,  and  a  beautiful  miniature  uni- 
versity, and  everybody  knows  everybody  else;  and 
when  the  King  or  Queen  drives  forth,  the  guard 
turns  out  and  blows  a  bugle,  and  so  all  Athens, 
which  is  always  sitting  at  the  caf£s  around  the 
square  of  the  palace,  nods  its  head  and  says, 
"  The  Queen  is  going  for  a  drive,"  or,  "  Her 
Majesty  has  returned  early  to-day,"  and  then 
continues  to  clank  its  sword  and  to  twirl  its  mus- 
tache and  to  sip  its  coffee.  Modern  Athens 
tends  towards  the  Frank  in  dress  and  habit  of 
thought.  The  men  have  adopted  his  costume, 
and  the  women  wear  little  flat  curls  like  the 
French  ladies  in  Le  Figaro,  and  peaked  bonnets 
and  high  heels. 

The  national  costume  of  the  Greeks  is  taken 
from  the  Albanians,  but  it  is  much  more  honored 
in  the  breach  than  in  the  observance.  Like  all 
national  costumes,  it  is  only  worn,  except  for 


MODERN    ATHENS  185 

political  effect  and  before  a  camera,  by  the  lower 
classes,  and  also  by  three  regiments  of  the  army. 
You  see  it  in  the  streets,  but  it  is  not  so  univer- 
sally popular  as  one  would  suppose  from  the  pict- 
ures of  Athens  in  the  illustrated  papers  and  by 
the  photographs  in  the  shop-windows.  It  is  a 
most  remarkable  costume,  and  as  widely  different 
from  the  flowing  robe  and  short  skirt  of  the  early 
Greeks  as  men  in  accordion  petticoats  and  heavy 
white  tights  and  a  Zouave  jacket  must  evidently 
be.  In  the  country  it  still  obtains,  and  it  is  the 
farmers  and  peasants  and  their  wives  and  the  sol- 
diers who  supply  the  picturesque  element  of  dress 
to  the  streets  of  the  city. 

It  is  an  inscrutable  problem  why,  with  all 
the  national  costumes  in  the  world  to  choose 
and  pick  from,  the  world  should  have  decided 
upon  the  dress  of  the  Frank,  that  is,  of  the  for- 
eigner— ourselves.  In  Spain  the  peasants  have 
discarded  their  knickerbockers  and  short  jackets, 
even  in  the  country,  for  the  long  trousers  and 
ill-fitting  ready-made  clothing  of  a  French  "  sweat- 
er," and  the  Moors  cover  their  robes  with  over- 
coats from  Manchester,  and  the  Arabs  and  Chinese 
and  Swiss  and  Turks  are  giving  up  the  pictu- 
resque garments  that  are  comfortable  and  becom- 
ing to  them,  and  look  exceedingly  ugly  and  un- 
comfortable in  our  own  modern  garb,  which  is 
the  ugliest  and  most  uncomfortable  of  national 
costumes  yet  devised  by  men  or  tailors.  If  you 
judge  by  the  uniforms  of  the  army  of  officers  and 
by  the  dress  of  the  women  of  Athens,  you  would 


1 86 


THE    RULERS    OF    THE    MEDITERRANEAN 


think  you   were   in  a  French  city  and  among 
French  people.     It  seems  a  pity  that  this  should 
be  so ;  that  Athens,  of  all  cities,  should  be  built  of 
Italian  villas,  inhabited  by 
people  who  ape  the  French, 
and   governed    by  a    King 
from  Denmark ;    still,  they 
did  not  make  a  success  of 
it  when  they  tried,  fifty  years 
ago,  to    govern 
themselves.  It  is 
perhaps    hardly 
fair  to  expect  the 
Greeks,  or  even 
the    Athenians, 
to  live  up  to  the 
great  rock   and 
the  monuments 
that    crown    it, 
and  the  people 
of  Greece  are  no 
doubt  as  fine  as 

those  of  other  little  kingdoms  or  principalities 
scattered  about  Europe ;  but  then  the  other  king- 
doms and  principalities  have  not  the  history  of 
early  Greece  to  call  their  own  nor  the  Acropolis 
to  look  up  to. 

The  rock  of  the  Acropolis  is  hardly  more  a 
part  of  modern  Greece  than  the  Rock  of  Gibraltar 
is  a  part  of  Spain.  Geographically  it  is,  but  it 
belongs  as  much  to  the  visitor  as  to  the  native,  so 
little  inspiration  has  he  apparently  drawn  from 


ALBANIAN   PEASANT   WOMAN 


MODERN    A1HK.NS 


i87 


it,  and  so  little  has  it  served  to  bring  out  in  him 
to-day  those  qualities  that  made  demigods  of  his 
ancestors.  I  think  I  represent  the  average  intelli- 
gence, and  yet  at  this  moment  I  cannot  think  of 
any  Greek  within  the  last  hundred  years  who  has 
gained  world-wide  renown,  either  as  a  sculptor,  an 
artist,  a  soldier,  a  writer  of  comedies  and  satires, 
a  statesman,  nor  even  as  an  archaeologist ;  the 
very  historians  of  Greece  and  the  exponents  of 
its  secrets  and  the  most  distinguished  of  its  ex- 
cavators are  of  other  countries. 
They  have  many  heroes  of  their 
own ;  you  see  their  portraits  or 
their  photographs  in  every  shop- 
window  ;  but  they  are  not  as  fa- 
miliar to  you  as  the  faces  and 
histories  of  those 
other  Greeks  who 
sighed  because 
there  were  no 
more  worlds,  and 
whose  fame  has 
lasted  long  after 
the  other  worlds 
were  discovered. 
One  would  think- 
that  some  young 
Greek,  on  arising  ALBANIAN  PEASANT  WOMAN 

in    the    morning 

and  seeing  the  Acropolis  against  the  sky,  would 
say  to  himself,  "To-day  I  shall  do  something 
worthy  of  that."  And  were  he  to  say  that  often 


1 88 


THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 


enough,  and  try  to  live  up  to  the  fortress  and  the 
temple  above  him,  he  might  help  to  make  Greece 
in  this  known  world  what  she  was  in  the  smaller 
world  of  her  day  of  glory.  It  is  not  because  the 

world  has  grown  and  giv- 
en her  more  with  which  to 
compete  that  she  has  fall- 
en into  lesser  and  lesser 
significance;  for  though 
the  world  has  increased 
in  latitude  and  longitude, 
it  has  not  yet  carved  an- 
other Hermes  like  that 
of  Praxiteles;  and  though 
it  has  added  three  conti- 
nents since  his  day,  it  has 
never  equalled  in  marbles 
the  fluttering  draperies 
of  the  Flying  Victory, 
nor  the  carvings  over  the 
doorway  of  the  Erech- 
theum. 

But,  as  far  as  in  him 
lies,  the  Greek  has  en- 
deavored to  copy  the  tra- 
ditions of  his  ancestors. 

He  holds  Olympic  games  in  the  ancient  arena 
which  King  George  has  had  excavated,  and  if 
victorious  receives  a  wreath  of  wild  olives  from 
the  hands  of  the  King ;  and  he  builds  the  new 
market  where  the  old  market  stood,  and  the  new 
military  hospital  as  near  as  is  possible  to  the 


GREEK   PEASANT 


MODERN    ATHENS 


189 


hospital  of  /-Esculapius.  But  he  cannot  restore 
to  the  market-place  that  very  human  citizen  who 
cast  in  his  shell  against  Aristides  because  he 
was  aweary  of  hearing  him  called  the  Just;  nor 
can  either  his  games  or  his  hospital  bring  back 
the  perfect  figure  and  health  of  the  men  whose 
figures  and  profiles  have  set  the  model  for  all 


ALBANIAN   PEASANT   IN   THE  STREETS  OF   ATHENS 

time.  He  has,  however,  retained  the  Greek  lan- 
guage, which  is  very  creditable  to  him,  as  it  is  a 
language  one  learns  only  after  much  difficulty, 
and  then  forgets  at  once.  He  even  goes  so  far 


190          THE   RULERS   OF    THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

as  to  put  up  the  names  of  the  streets  in  Greek, 
which  strikes  the  bewildered  tourist  trying  to  find 
his  way  back  to  his  hotel  as  a  trifle  pedantic,  and 
he  prints  his  daily  newspaper  in  this  same  tongue. 
This  is,  perhaps,  going  a  little  too  far,  as  it  leaves 
you  in  some  doubt  as  to  whether  you  have  been 
reading  of  the  Panama  scandal  or  a  reprint  on  the 
battle  of  Marathon. 

Baron  Sina,  a  Greek  banker,  has  shown  the  most 
public-spirited  and  patriotic  generosity,  and  taste 
as  well,  in  erecting  the  buildings  of  the  university 
at  his  own  expense  and  giving  them  to  the  city. 
They  are  reproductions  in  many  ways  of  different 
parts  of  the  temples  of  the  Acropolis  in  minia- 
ture. The  Polytechnic  is  almost  an  exact  copy 
of  the  front  of  the  Parthenon.  There  is  a  picture 
of  it  from  a  photograph  given  in  this  article,  but 
it  can  supply  no  idea  of  the  beauty  of  the  modern 
reproduction  of  this  temple.  The  lines  and  meas- 
urements are  the  same  in  degree ;  and  the  Poly- 
technic, besides,  is  colored  and  gilded  as  was  the 
original  Parthenon,  and  for  the  first  time  makes 
you  understand  how  brilliant  reds  and  beautiful 
blues  and  gold  and  black  on  marble  can  be  com- 
bined with  the  marble's  purity  and  help  rather 
than  cheapen  it.  It  is  a  lesson  in  loveliness,  and 
is  as  wonderful  and  brilliantly  beautiful  a  building 
as  the  marble  and  gold  monument  to  the  Prince 
Consort  in  Hyde  Park  is  vulgar  and  atrocious. 
If  this  copy  in  miniature,  this  working  model  of 
the  Parthenon,  moves  one  as  it  does,  it  can  be 
understood  how  great  must  be  the  strength  and 


MODERN   ATHENS  193 

purity  of  the  Parthenon,  even  in  ruins,  with  its 
gilt  washed  to  a  dull  brown  and  its  colors  and 
bass-reliefs  stripped  from  its  pediment.  I  shall 
certainly  not  attempt  to  describe  it. 

There  are  very  few  tourists  who  visit  Athens  in 
proportion  to  those  who  visit  far  less  momentous 
ruins ;  thousands  go  to  Rome  and  see  the  Colos- 
seum, to  Egypt  and  view  the  storied  walls  of  the 
great  rude  temples  along  the  Nile,  and  as  many 
more  make  the  tour  of  the  English  cathedral 
towns ;  but  in  Athens  it  is  almost  difficult  to  find 
a  guide.  There  are  not  more  than  a  half-dozen, 
I  am  sure,  in  the  whole  city,  and  the  Acropolis  is 
yours  if  you  wish,  and  you  are  often  as  much 
alone  as  though  you  had  been  the  first  to  climb 
its  sides.  I  do  not  mean  by  this  that  it  is  neg- 
lected, or  that  relic -hunters  may  chip  at  it  or 
carry  away  pieces  of  its  handiwork,  or  broken  bits 
of  the  Turkish  shells  that  have  shattered  it,  but 
the  guards  are  unobtrusive,  and  you  are  free  to 
wander  in  and  out  in  this  forest  of  marble  and 
fallen  trunks  of  columns  as  though  you  were  the 
ghost  of  some  Athenian  citizen  revisiting  the 
scenes  of  his  former  life. 

There  is  no  question  that  half  of  the  pleasure 
you  receive  in  wandering  over  the  top  of  this 
great  wind-blown  rock,  with  the  surrounding 
snow-touched  mountains  on  a  level  with  your 
eye,  and  the  great  temples  rearing  above  you  or 
lying  broken  at  your  feet,  magnificent  even  there, 
is  due  to  your  seeing  them  alone,  to  the  fact  that 
no  guide's  parrot-like  volubility  harasses  you,  no 


194 


THE  RULERS  OF  THE  MEDITERRANEAN 


guard's  scornful  gloom  chills  your  enthusiasm. 
The  great  bay  of  turquoise-blue  and  the  green 
fields  and  the  bunches  of  cactus  and  groves  of 
dark  olive-trees  below  are  un- 
spoiled   by    modern    innova- 
tions, and  the  hills   are   still 
dotted  with  sheep  and  shep- 
herds, as   they  were    in    the 
days  of  Sappho. 

Overhead  is  the  blue  sky, 
with  the  ivory  columns  be- 
tween, far  below  you  is  the 
steep  naked  rock,  or,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  two  semicir- 
cles of  marble  seats  cushioned 
with  velvet  moss  and  carpeted 
with  daisies  and  violets,  and 
beyond  the  limits  of  the  yel- 
low town  and  its  red  roofs  and 
dark  green  gardens  stretches 
the  green  plain  until  it  touch- 
es the  sea,  or  is  blocked  by 
Mount  Hymettus  or  Mount 
Pentelicus,  beyond  which  lat- 
ter lies  the  field  of  Marathon. 
Sitting  on  the  edge  of  the  rock,  you  can  imagine 
the  actors  strutting  out  into  the  theatre  below, 
and  the  acquiescent  chorus  chanting  its  surprise 
or  horror,  and  almost  see  the  bent  shoulders  and 
heads  of  the  people  filling  the  half -circle  and 
leaning  forward  to  catch  each  word  of  the  play 
as  it  comes  to  them  through  the  actors'  masks. 


AN  OLD  ATHENIAN  OF 
THE  PRESENT  DAY 


MODERN    ATHENS 


'95 


Sounds,  no  matter  how  far  afield,  drift  to  you 
drowsily,  like  the  voice  of  one  reading  aloud  on 
a  summer's  day — the  bleating  of  the  sheep  in  the 
valley  where  Plato  argued,  and  the  jangling  of  a 
goat's  bell,  or  the  laughter  of  children  flying  kites 
on  the  Pnyx,  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away.  And  be- 
yond the  reach  of  sound  is  the  jEgean  Sea  wel- 
tering in  the  sun,  with  little 
three-cornered  sails,  like  tops, 
or  a  great  vessel  drawing  a 
chalk-line  after  it  through  the 
still  surface  of  the  water.  All 
things  are  possible  at  such 
a  time  in  this  place.  You 
can  almost  hear  the  bees  on 
Mount  Hymettus,  and  you 
would  receive  the  advance  of 
a  Centaur  as  calmly  as  Alice 
noted  the  approach  of  the 
White  Rabbit.  You  believe 
in  nymphs  and  satyrs.  They 
have  their  homes  there  in 
those  caves,  and  in  the  thick 
green,  almost  black,  woods  at 
the  base  of  the  Parnes  range, 
and  you  love  the  bravery  of 
St.  Paul,  who  dared  to  doubt 
such  things  when  he  stood  on 
the  rock  at  your  feet  and  told 
the  men  of  Athens  that  they  were  in  many  things 
too  superstitious.  It  is  something  to  have  seen 
the  ribs  cut  in  the  rock  on  the  top  of  the  Acropolis 


A   GREEK    SlItl'IlKRU 


196  THE   RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

which  kept  the  wheels  of  the  chariots  from  slipping 
when  the  Panathenaic  procession  moved  along  the 
Via  Sacra  to  the  Eleusinian  mysteries,  to  have 
looked  upon  the  caryatides  of  the  Erechtheum, 
and  to  have  wanted  back  as  a  lost  part  of  your  own 
self,  for  the  time  being,  the  Elgin  marbles.  When 
Napoleon  stole  the  Venus  of  Milo  he  placed  her  in 
the  Louvre,  where  every  one  will  see  her  sooner  or 
later ;  for  if  he  is  good  he  goes  to  Paris  when  he 
dies,  and  if  he  is  bad  he  is  sure  to  go  there  in  his 
lifetime.  But  who  has  ever  been  to  the  British 
Museum?  One  would  as  soon  think  of  visiting 
Pentonville  prison.  And  how  do  the  marbles 
look  under  the  soot-stained  windows  or  the  gray 
of  London  fog?  Like  the  few  Lord  Elgin  did 
not  want,  and  that  stand  out  like  ivory  in  their 
proper  height  against  the  soft  sky  that  knows 
and  loves  them?  When  the  people  of  Great 
Britain  have  returned  the  Elgin  marbles  to 
Greece,  and  the  Rock  of  Gibraltar  to  Spain,  and 
the  Koh-i-noor  diamond  to  India,  and  Egypt  to 
the  Egyptians,  they  will  be  a  proud  and  haughty 
people,  and  will  be  able  to  hold  their  heads  as 
high  as  any  one. 

One  cannot  help  feeling  that  the  King  of 
Greece  has  a  much  greater  responsibility  than  he 
knows.  Other  monarchs  must  look  after  their 
boundaries ;  he  must  not  only  look  after  his 
boundaries,  but  his  sky-line.  Another  such  af- 
front to  good  taste  as  the  observatory  on  the 
Hill  of  the  Nymphs,  and  the  sky-line  of  Athens 
will  be  unrecognizable.  And  the  tall  chimneys 


MODERN    ATI!  I  197 

at  the  Piraeus  are  not  half  as  attractive  to  the 
view  as  the  spars  of  the  ships.  It  is  much  better 
not  to  have  manufactories  that  must  have  chim- 
neys than  to  spoil  a  view  which  no  other  kingdom 
can  equal.  Any  king  can  put  up  a  chimney; 
very  few  are  given  the  care  of  an  Acropolis  ;  and 
if  the  King  and  Queen  of  Greece  wish  to  be  re- 
membered as  kindly  by  the  rest  of  the  world  as 
they  are  loved  dearly  by  their  adopted  people, 
they  will  guard  the  treasure  put  in  their  keeping, 
and  sweep  observatories  from  sacred  hills,  and 
continue  to  limit  the  guides  on  the  Acropolis, 
and  so  win  the  gratitude  of  a  civilized  world. 


VII 
CONSTANTINOPLE 

LITTLE  Italian  steamer  drew  cau- 
tiously away  from  the  Piraeus  when 
the  waters  of  the  bay  were  quite 
black  and  the  quays  looked  like  a 
row  of  foot -lights  in  front  of  the 
dark  curtain  of  the  night.  $he  grazed  the  anchor 
chains  of  H.  M.  S.  the  Colossus,  where  that  ship  of 
war's  broad  white  deck  lay  level  with  the  water, 
as  heavy  and  solid  as  a  stone  pier.  She  seemed 
to  rise  like  an  island  of  iron  from  the  very  bottom 
of  the  bay.  Her  sailors,  as  broad  and  heavy  and 
clean  as  the  decks,  raised  their  heads  from  their 
pipes  as  we  passed  under  the  glare  of  the  man-of- 
war's  electric  lights,  and  a  bugle  call  came  faintly 
from  somewhere  up  in  the  bow.  It  sounded  as 
though  it  were  a  quarter  of  a  mile  away.  Our 
lower  deck  was  packed  with  Greeks  and  Albanians 
and  Turks,  lying  as  closely  together  on  the  hard 
planks  as  cartridges  in  the  front  of  a  Circassian's 
overcoat.  They  were  very  dirty  and  very  hand- 
some, in  rakish  little  black  silk  pill-box  caps,  with 
red  and  gold  tops,  and  the  initials  "  H.  I."  worked 


CONSTANTINOPLE  199 

in  the  embroidery ;  their  canvas  breeches  were  as 
baggy  and  patched  and  muddy  as  those  of  a  foot- 
ball-player, and  their  sleeveless  jackets  and  double 
waistcoats  of  red  and  gold  made  them  look  like  a 
uniformed  soldiery  that  had  seen  very  hard  ser- 
vice. Priests  of  the  Greek  Church,  with  long  hair 
and  black  formless  robes,  and  hats  like  stove- 
pipes with  the  brim  around  the  upper  end,  pa- 
raded the  narrow  confines  of  the  second  cabin, 
and  German  tourists  with  red  guide-books,  and 
the  Italian  ship's  officers  with  a  great  many  med- 
als and  very  bad  manners,  stamped  up  and  down 
the  main-deck  and  named  the  shadowy  islands 
that  rose  from  the  sea  and  dropped  out  of  sight 
again  as  we  steamed  past  them. 

In  the  morning  the  islands  had  disappeared  al- 
together, and  we  were  between  high  banks — high- 
er than,  but  not  so  steep  as  the  Palisades ;  rows  of 
little  scrubby  trees  ran  along  their  fronts  in  lateral 
lines,  and  at  their  base  mud  forts  with  mud  bar- 
racks and  thatched  roofs  pointed  little  cannon  at 
us  from  every  jutting  rock.  We  were  so  near  that 
one  could  have  hit  the  face  of  the  high  hills  with 
a  stone.  These  were  the  Dardanelles,  the  banks 
that  nature  has  set  between  the  Sea  of  Marmora 
and  the  Mediterranean  to  protect  Constantinople 
from  Mediterranean  squadrons.  We  pass  between 
these  banks  for  hours,  or  between  the  high  bank 
of  Roumelia  on  one  side  and  the  low  hilly  coun- 
try of  Asia  where  Troy  once  stood  on  the  other, 
until,  at  sunset,  we  are  halted  in  the  narrowest 
strait  of  the  Dardanelles,  between  the  Castle  of 


20O  THE    RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

Asia  and  the  Castle  of  Europe,  "the  Lock  of  the 
Sea"  —  that  sea  of  which  Gibraltar  is  the  key. 
That  night  we  cross  through  the  Sea  of  Marmora, 
and  by  sunrise  are  at  Constantinople. 

Constantinople  is  such  a  long  word,  and  so  few 
of  the  people  you  know  have  visited  it  in  com- 
parison with  those  who  have  wintered  at  Cairo  or 
at  Rome,  or  who  have  spent  a  season  at  Vienna, 
or  taken  music -lessons  in  Berlin,  that  you  ap- 
proach it  with  a  mind  prepared  for  surprises  and 
with  the  hope  of  the  unexpected.  I  had  expect- 
ed that  the  heart  of  the  Ottoman  Empire  would 
be  outwardly  a  brilliant  and  flashing  city  of  gild- 
ed domes  and  minarets,  a  cluster  of  colored  house 
fronts  rising  from  the  dancing  waters  of  the  Bos- 
porus, and  with  the  banks  lined  with  great  white 
palaces  among  gardens  of  green  trees.  There  are 
more  gilded  domes  in  New  York  city  and  in  Bos- 
ton than  in  Constantinople.  In  New  York  there 
are  three,  and  in  Boston  there  is  the  State  House, 
which  looks  very  fine  indeed  from  the  new  bridge 
across  the  Charles  when  the  river  is  blocked  with 
gray  ice,  and  a  setting  sun  is  throwing  a  light  on 
the  big  yellow  globe.  But  Constantinople  is  all 
white  and  gray;  the  palaces  that  line  the  Bos- 
porus are  of  a  brilliant  white  stucco,  and  the 
mosques  like  monster  turtles,  which  give  the  city 
its  chief  distinction,  are  a  dull  white.  In  the 
Turkish  quarter  the  houses  are  more  sombre  still, 
of  a  peculiar  black  wood,  and  built  like  the  old 
log  forts  in  which  our  great-great-grandfathers 
took  refuge  from  the  Indians  —  square  buildings 


CONSTANTINOPLE  203 

with  an  overhanging  story  from  which  those  in- 
side could  fire  down  upon  the  enemy  below.  The 
jutting  balcony  on  the  Turkish  houses  is  for  the 
less  serious  purpose  of  allowing  the  harem  to 
look  down  upon  the  passers-by. 

Constantinople  is  a  fair-weather  city,  and  needs 
the  sun  and  the  blue  sky  and  the  life  of  the  waters 
about  it,  which  give  to  the  city  its  real  individu- 
ality. It  misses  in  winter  the  pleasure-yachts  of 
the  summer  months,  the  white  uniforms  of  the 
thousands  of  boatmen,  and  the  brighter  dressing 
of  the  awnings  and  flags  of  the  ships  and  steam- 
ers. But  the  waters  about  Constantinople  are  its 
best  part,  and  are  fuller  and  busier  and  brighter 
than  either  those  around  the  Battery  or  those  be- 
low the  Thames  Embankment,  and  by  standing 
on  its  wide  wooden  bridge,  over  which  more 
people  pass  in  a  day  than  over  any  other  (save 
London  Bridge)  in  the  world,  one  can  see  a  pro- 
cession of  all  the  nations  of  the  East. 

Constantinople  is  a  much  more  primitive  city 
than  one  would  expect  the  largest  of  all  Eastern 
cities  to  be.  It  impresses  you  as  a  city  without 
any  municipal  control  whatsoever,  and  you  come 
upon  a  building  with  the  stamp  of  the  municipal 
palace  upon  it  with  as  much  surprise  as  you  would 
feel  in  finding  an  underwriter's  office  at  the  north 
pole.  In  many  ways  it  is  the  most  primitive  city 
that  I  have  ever  been  in.  It  all  that  pertains  to 
the  Sultan,  to  the  religion  of  the  people,  of  which 
he  is  the  head,  and  to  the  army,  the  recognition 
due  them  is  rigidly  and  impressively  observed. 


204          THE   RULERS   OF  THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

But  in  what  regards  the  local  life  of  the  people 
there  seems  to  be  absolutely  no  interest  and  no 
responsibility.  There  is  no  such  absolute  power 
in  Europe,  not  excepting  that  of  the  Czar  or  of  the 
young  Emperor,  as  is  that  exercised  by  the  Sul- 
tan ;  and  the  mosques  of  the  faithful  are  guarded 
and  decorated  and  held  more  highly  in  reverence 
than  are  many  churches  of  a  more  civilized  peo- 
ple ;  and  the  army  impresses  you  as  one  you 
would  much  prefer  to  lead  than  one  from  which 
you  would  elect  to  run  away.  But  the  comfort 
of  the  inhabitants  of  Constantinople  is  little 
considered.  There  is  nothing  that  one  can  see 
of  what  we  call  public  spirit,  unless  building  a 
mosque  and  calling  it  after  yourself,  in  a  city  al- 
ready supplied  with  the  most  magnificent  of  such 
temples,  can  be  called  public-spirited.  Of  course 
one  does  not  go  to  Constantinople  to  see  electric 
lights  and  asphalt  pavements,  nor  to  gather  statis- 
tics on  the  poor-rate,  but  it  is  interesting  to  find 
people  so  nearly  in  touch  with  the  world  in  many 
things,  and  so  far  away  from  it  in  others.  As  long 
as  I  do  not  have  to  live  in  Constantinople,  I  find 
its  lack  of  municipal  spirit  quite  as  interesting  a 
feature  of  the  city  as  its  mosques. 

Constantinople,  for  example,  is  a  city  with  as 
large  a  population  as  has  Berlin  or  Vienna,  and  its 
fire  department  is  what  you  see  in  the  illustration 
accompanying  this  chapter.  They  are  very  hand- 
some men,  as  you  can  note  for  yourself,  and  very 
smart-looking ,  but  when  they  go  to  a  fire  they 
make  a  bargain  with  the  owner  of  the  building 


CONSTANTINOPLE  207 

before  they  attempt  to  save  his  property.  The 
great  fire-tower  in  this  capital  of  the  Ottoman 
Empire  is  in  Galata,  and  from  it  watchmen  sur- 
vey the  city  with  glasses,  and  at  the  first  sight  of 
a  blazing  roof  one  of  them  runs  down  the  tower 
and  races  through  the  uneven  streets,  calling  out 
the  fact  that  a  house  is  burning,  and  where  that 
house  may  be.  Each  watchman  he  meets  takes 
up  the  cry,  and  continues  calling  out  that  the 
house  is  burning,  even  though  the  house  is  three 
miles  away,  until  it  burns  down  or  is  built  up 
again,  or  the  watchman  is  retired  for  long  service 
and  pensioned.  Besides  these  amateur  firemen 
there  are  two  real  fire  companies,  but  they  can 
do  little  in  a  city  of  880,000  people. 

The  police  who  guard  Constantinople  at  night 
are  an  equally  primitive  body  of  men.  They 
carry  a  heavy  club,  about  five  feet  long  and  as 
thick  as  a  man's  wrist,  and  with  this  they  beat 
the  stones  in  the  streets  to  assure  people  that 
they  are  attending  strictly  to  their  work,  and  are 
not  sleeping  in  doorways.  The  result  of  this  is 
that  no  one  can  get  to  sleep,  and  all  evil-minded 
persons  can  tell  exactly  where  the  night-watch- 
man is,  and  so  keep  out  of  his  way.  The  watch- 
man under  my  window  seemed  to  act  on  the  idea 
of  the  gentleman  who,  on  taking  his  first  trip  on 
a  sleeping-car,  declared  that  if  he  couldn't  sleep 
no  one  else  should,  and  acted  accordingly. 

There  is  nothing,  so  far  as  I  can  see,  in  which 
the  Oriental  delights  as  much  as  he  does  in  making 
a  noise.  It  is  most  curious  to  find  a  whole  people 


208  THE    RULERS    OF    THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

without  nerves,  who  cannot  talk  without  shout- 
ing, and  who  cannot  shout  without  giving  you  the 
idea  that  they  are  in  great  pain,  and  that  unless 
relief  comes  promptly  they  will  die,  and  that  it  will 
be  your  fault.  Those  of  them  who  sell  bread  or 
fruits  or  fish  or  beads,  or  whatever  it  may  be,  in 
the  streets,  bellow  rather  than  shout,  or  cry  in 
sharp,  agonizing  shrieks,  high  and  nasal  and  fierce. 
They  apparently  never  "  move  on."  They  always 
meet  under  your  window  or  at  the  corners  of  a 
street,  and  there  all  shout  at  once,  and  no  one 
pays  the  least  attention  to  them.  They  might 
be  lamp-posts  or  minarets,  for  all  the  notice  they 
receive.  I  can  imagine  no  fate  or  torture  so 
awful  as  to  be  ill  in  Constantinople  and  to  have 
to  lie  helpless  and  listen  to  the  street  cries,  to  the 
tin  horns  of  the  men  who  run  ahead  of  the  street- 
cars— which  incidentally  gives  you  an  idea  of  the 
speed  of  these  cars — and  to  the  snarling  and 
barking  of  the  thousands  of  street  dogs. 

There  are  three  or  four  intensely  interesting 
ceremonies  and  many  show-places  in  Constanti- 
nople which  are  unlike  anything  of  the  same  sort 
in  any  other  city.  Apart  from  these  and  the 
bazars,  which  are  very  wonderful,  there  is  nothing 
in  the  city  itself  which  makes  even  the  Oriental 
seek  it  in  preference  to  his  own  mountains  or 
plains  or  native  village.  Constantinople,  so  far 
as  its  population  is  to  be  considered,  is  standing 
still.  It  impresses  you  as  stagnant  before  your 
statistical  friend  or  the  oldest  member  of  the 
diplomatic  corps  or  the  oldest  inhabitant  tells 


CONSTANTINOPLE  211 

you  that  it  is  so.  You  can  very  well  imagine 
the  Frank's  finding  a  long  residence  in  Cairo  pos- 
sible, or  in  pretty  little  Athens,  where  the  boule- 
vards and  the  classics  are  so  strangely  jumbled, 
but  one  cannot  understand  a  man's  settling  down 
in  Constantinople.  Where  there  are  no  women 
there  can  be  no  court,  and  the  few  rich  Greek 
residents  and  still  fewer  of  the  pashas  and  the 
diplomats  make  the  society  of  the  city.  Even 
these  last  find  it  far  from  gay,  for  it  so  happens 
that  the  ambassadors  are  all  either  bachelors, 
widowers,  or  the  husbands  of  invalid  wives,  and 
the  result  is  a  society  which  depends  largely  on  a 
very  smart  club  for  its  amusement.  In  the  win- 
ter-time, when  the  snow  and  rain  sweep  over  the 
three  hills,  and  the  solitary  street  of  Galata  is  a 
foot  deep  in  slush  and  mud,  and  the  china  stoves 
radiate  a  candle-like  heat  in  a  room  built  to  let  in 
all  the  air  possible,  I  can  imagine  few  less  desira- 
ble places  than  the  capital  of  the  Ottoman  Em- 
pire. This  is  in  the  winter  only ;  as  I  have  said, 
it  is  a  fair-weather  city,  and  I  did  not  see  it  at 
its  best. 

There  are  three  things  to  which  one  is  taken 
in  Constantinople  —  the  mosque  of  St.  Sophia, 
the  treasures  of  the  Sultan,  and  the  Sultan  going 
to  pray  in  his  own  private  mosque.  The  Sultan's 
own  mosque  is  situated  conveniently  near  his 
palace,  not  more  than  a  few  hundred  feet  distant. 
Once  every  Friday  he  rides  this  distance,  and 
once  a  year  journeys  as  far  as  the  mosque  of  St. 
Sophia.  With  these  outings  he  is  content,  and 


212  THE    RULERS    OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

on  no  other  occasions  does  he  show  himself  to 
his  people  or  leave  his  palace.  This  is  what  it  is 
to  be  a  sovereign  of  many  countries  in  Europe, 
Asia,  and  Africa,  the  head  of  the  Mussulman  re- 
ligion ;  and  the  ruler  of  nations  and  lands  con- 
quered by  your  ancestors,  of  which  you  see  less 
than  a  donkey- boy  in  Cairo  or  the  owner  of  a 
caique  on  the  Bosporus.  We  used  to  sing  in 
college, 

"  The  Sultan  better  pleases  me ; 
His  life  is  full  of  jollity." 

The  jollity  of  a  life  which  the  possessor  believes 
to  be  threatened  by  assassination  in  every  form 
and  at  any  moment  is  of  a  somewhat  ghastly 
nature. 

You  obtain  tickets  for  the  Selamlik,  as  the  cere- 
mony of  the  Sultan's  visit  to  his  mosque  is  called, 
and  you  are  requested,  as  you  are  supposed  to  be 
the  guest  of  the  Sultan  on  these  occasions,  not 
to  bring  opera -glasses.  But  it  is  nevertheless 
strongly  suggestive  of  a  theatrical  performance. 
The  mosque  is  on  one  side  of  a  wide  street ;  the 
houses  in  which  the  spectators  sit,  like  the  audi- 
ence in  a  grand-stand,  are  on  the  other.  One 
end  of  the  street  is  blocked  by  a  great  square, 
and  the  other  by  the  gateway  of  the  palace  from 
which  the  Sultan  comes.  The  street  is  not  more 
than  a  hundred  yards  in  length.  A  band  of  music 
enters  this  square  first  and  plays  the  overture  to 
the  ceremony.  The  musicians  are  mounted  on 
horseback  and  followed  by  a  double  line  of  caval- 


CONSTANTINOPLE  213 

rymen  on  white  horses,  and  each  carrying  a  lance 
;it  rest  with  a  red  pennant.  There  are  thousands 
of  these ;  they  stretch  out  like  telegraph  poles  on 
the  prairie  to  an  interminable  length,  their  scarlet 
pennants  flapping  and  rustling  in  the  sharp  east 
wind  like  a  forest  of  autumn  leaves.  You  begin 
to  suspect  that  they  are  going  around  the  square 
and  returning  again  many  times,  as  the  supers  do 
in  "  Ours."  Then  the  horses  turn  black  and  the 
overcoats  of  the  men  change  from  gray  to  blue, 
and  more  scarlet  pennants  stretch  like  an  arch  of 
bunting  along  the  street  leading  to  the  palace, 
until  they  have  all  filed  into  the  open  square  and 
halt  there  stirrup  to  stirrup,  a  moving  mass  of 
four  thousand  restless  horses  and  four  thousand 
scarlet  flags.  And  then  more  bands  and  drums 
and  bugle -calls  come  from  every  point  of  the 
city,  and  regiment  after  regiment  swarms  up  the 
hill  on  which  the  palace  rests,  the  tune  of  one 
band  of  music  breaking  in  on  the  tune  of  the 
next,  as  do  those  of  the  political  processions  at 
home,  until  every  approach  to  the  gate  of  the 
palace  is  blocked  from  curb  to  curb  with  armed 
men,  and  you  look  out  and  down  upon  the  points 
of  five  thousand  bayonets  crushed  into  a  space 
not  one-fifth  as  large  as  Madison  Square.  There 
is  no  populace  to  see  this  spectacle,  only  those  of 
the  faithful  who  stop  on  their  way  to  Mecca  to 
catch  this  glimpse  of  the  head  of  their  religion, 
and  a  few  women  who  have  brought  petitions  to 
present  to  him  and  who  are  allowed  within  the 
lines  of  soldiers. 


214          THE   RULERS   dF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

But  pashas  and  beys  and  other  high  dignitaries 
are  arriving  every  moment  in  full  regalia,  for  this 
is  like  a  drawing-room  at  Buckingham  Palace,  or 
a  levee  at  St.  James's,  and  every  one  must  leave 
all  other  matters  to  attend  it.  Twenty  men  with 
twenty  carts  rush  out  suddenly  from  the  curtain 
of  Zouaves  and  sailors,  and  scatter  soft  gravel  on 
the  fifty  yards  of  roadway  over  which  the  Sultan 
intends  to  drive.  They  remind  you  of  the  men 
in  the  circus  who  spread  sawdust  over  the  ring 
after  the  horses'  hoofs  have  torn  it.  And  then, 
high  above  the  heads  of  the  nine  thousand  sol- 
diers and  the  few  thousand  more  dignitaries,  dip- 
lomats, and  spectators,  a  priest  in  a  green  turban 
calls  aloud  from  the  top  of  the  minaret.  It  is 
a  very  beautiful  cry  or  call,  in  a  strong,  sweet  tenor 
voice,  inexpressibly  weird  and  sad  and  impressive. 
It  is  answered  by  a  bugle  call  given  slowly  and 
clearly  like  a  man  speaking,  and  at  a  certain  note 
the  entire  nine  thousand  soldiers  salute.  It  is 
done  with  a  precision  and  shock  so  admirable  that 
you  would  think,  except  for  the  volume  of  the 
noise,  that  but  one  man  had  moved  his  piece. 
The  voice  of  the  priest  rises  again,  and  is  answered 
by  triumphant  strains  of  brass,  and  the  gates  of 
the  palace  open,  and  a  glittering  procession  of 
officers  and  princes  and  pashas  moves  down  the 
broad  street,  encircling  a  carriage  drawn  by  two 
horses  and  driven  by  servants  in  gold.  At  the 
sight  of  this  the  soldiers  cry  "  Long  live  the  Sul- 
tan "  three  times.  It  is  like  the  roar  of  a  salute 
of  cannon,  and  has  all  the  feeling  of  a  cheer.  The 


STREET  DOGS  OF  CONSTANTIN<>I'I.K 


CONSTANTINOPLE  2 1  7 

Sultan  sits  in  the  back  of  the  open  carriage,  a 
slight,  tired -looking  man,  with  a  pale  face  and 
black  beard.  He  is  dressed  in  a  fur  overcoat 
and  fez.  As  he  passes,  the  men  of  his  army — 
and  they  arc  men — salute  him,  and  the  veiled 
women  stand  on  tiptoe  behind  them  and  stretch 
out  their  petitions,  and  the  pashas  and  chamber- 
lains and  cabinet  officers  bend  their  bodies  and 
touch  the  hand  to  the  heart,  lip,  and  forehead, 
and  drop  it  again  to  the  knee.  The  pilgrims  to 
Mecca  fall  prostrate  on  their  faces,  and  the  Sul- 
tan bows  his  head  and  touches  his  hand  to  his 
fez.  Opposite  him  sits  Osman  Pasha,  the  hero 
of  the  last  war,  and  one  of  the  greatest  gen- 
erals of  the  world,  his  shoulders  squared,  his 
heart  covered  with  stars,  and  his  keen,  observant 
eyes  wandering  from  the  pale  face  of  his  sovereign 
to  the  browned,  hardy-looking  countenances  of 
his  men. 

The  Sultan  remains  a  half-hour  in  the  mosque, 
and  on  his  return  drives  himself  back  to  the  pal- 
ace in  an  open  landau.  This  was  the  first  time 
I  had  seen  the  Turkish  soldier  in  bulk,  and  he 
impressed  me  more  than  did  any  other  soldier  I 
had  seen  along  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean. 
I  had  seen  the  British  troops  repulse  an  imaginary 
attack  upon  the  rock  of  Gibraltar,  and  half  of  the 
Army  of  Occupation  in  Egypt  dislodge  an  imag- 
inary enemy  from  the  sand  hills  around  Cairo, 
and  I  had  seen  French  and  Italian  and  Greek  sol- 
diers in  lesser  proportion  and  in  lesser  activity. 
But  to  me  none  of  these  had  the  build  or  the 


2l8          THE   RULERS    OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

bearing  or  the  ready  if  rough  look  of  these  Turks. 
The  French  Zouaves  of  Algiers  came  next  to 
them  to  my  mind,  and  it  may  be  that  the  similar- 
ity of  the  uniform  would  explain  that ;  but  as  I 
heard  the  Sultan's  troops  that  morning  marching 
up  the  hills  to  their  outlandish  music,  and  looked 
into  eyes  that  had  never  been  shaded  from  the 
sun,  and  at  the  spring  and  swing  of  legs  that  had 
never  worn  civilized  trousers,  I  recalled  several 
notable  battles  of  past  history,  and  the  more  re- 
cent lines  of  Mr.  Rudyard  Kipling  where  he  pays 
his  compliments  to  the  Russian  on  the  frontier : 

"  I'm  sorry  for  Mr.  Bluebeard, 
I'd  be  sorry  to  cause  him  pain ; 
But  a  hell  of  a  spree 
There  is  sure  to  be 
When  he  comes  back  again." 

The  Oriental  is  one  of  those  people  who  do 
things  by  halves.  He  has  a  fine  army,  but  the 
bulk  of  his  navy  has  not  left  the  Golden  Horn 
for  many  years,  and  it  is  doubtful  if  it  could  leave 
it ;  his  palace  walls  are  of  mosaic  and  wonderfully 
painted  tiles,  and  the  roofs  of  rusty  tin  ;  his  sons 
are  given  the  questionable  but  expensive  educa- 
tion of  Paris,  and  his  daughters  are  not  allowed 
to  walk  abroad  unless  guarded  by  servants,  and 
with  the  knowledge  that  every  policeman  spies 
upon  them,  knowing  that,  could  he  detect  them 
in  an  indiscretion,  he  would  be  rewarded  and  gain 
promotion.  Consequently  it  does  not  surprise 


CONSTANTINOPLE  221 

you  when  you  find  the  Sultan's  treasures  heaped 
together  under  dirty  glass  cases,  and  treated  with 
the  indifference  a  child  pays  to  its  last  year's  toys. 
The  crown-jewels  and  regalia  kept  at  the  Tow- 
er, itself  under  iron  bars  and  guarded  by  Beef- 
eaters, are  not  half  as  impressive  as  are  the  jewels 
of  the  Sultan,  which  lie  covered  with  dust  under 
a  glass  show-case,  and  guarded  by  a  few  gloomy- 
looking  effendis  in  frock-coats.  All  the  presents 
from  other  monarchs  and  all  the  gifts  of  lesser 
notables  who  have  sought  some  Sultan's  favor, 
all  the  arms  and  trophies  of  generations  of  wars, 
are  piled  together  in  this  treasury  with  less  care 
than  one  would  give  to  a  rack  of  pipes.  It  is  a 
very  remarkable  exhibition,  and  it  is  magnificent 
in  its  Oriental  disregard  for  wealth  through  long 
association  with  it.  Bronze  busts  of  emperors, 
jewelled  swords,  imperial  orders,  music -boxes, 
gun-cases,  weapons  of  gold  instead  of  steel,  pre- 
cious stones,  and  silver  dressing-cases  are  all 
heaped  together  on  dusty  shelves,  without  order 
and  classification  and  without  care.  You  can  see 
here  handfuls  of  uncut  precious  stones  on  china 
plates,  or  dozens  of  gold  and  silver  pistols  thrown 
in  a  corner  like  kindling-wood.  And  the  most 
remarkable  exhibition  of  all  is  the  magnificent 
robes  of  those  Sultans  who  are  dead,  with  the 
jewels  and  jewelled  swords  and  belts  and  insignia 
worn  by  them,  placed  on  dummies  in  a  glass  case, 
as  though  they  were  a  row  of  stuffed  birds  or 
specimens  of  rock.  In  the  turbans  of  one  of 
these  figures  there  arc  pearls  as  large  as  a  worn- 


222  THE    RULERS    OF    THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

an's  thumb,  and  emeralds  and  rubies  as  large  as 
eggs,  and  ropes  of  diamonds.  This  sounds  like  a 
story  from  the  Arabian  Nights ;  but  then  these 
are  the  heroes  of  the  Arabian  Nights — the  Sul- 
tans who  owned  the  whole  northern  coast  of 
Africa  and  Asia,  and  who  spent  on  display  and 
ornament  what  we  put  into  education  and  rail- 
roads. 

The  present  Sultan,  Abd-ul-Hammed  II.,  so 
far  differs  from  those  who  have  preceded  him 
that  he  as  well  as  ourselves  spends  money  on  ed- 
ucation and  railroads  and  all  that  they  imply. 
As  the  head  of  a  religion  and  of  an  empire  he 
may  not  cheapen  himself  by  being  seen  too  often 
by  his  people,  but  his  interests  spread  beyond 
even  the  great  extent  of  his  own  boundaries,  and 
his  money  is  given  to  sufferers  as  far  apart  in  all 
but  misfortune  as  the  Johnstown  refugees  and 
the  victims  of  the  earthquakes  of  Zante  and 
Corfu.  And  his  protection  is  extended  to  the 
American  missionaries  who  enter  his  country  to 
preach  a  religion  to  which  he  is  opposed.  While 
I  was  in  Constantinople  he  showed  the  variety 
of  his  interests  in  the  outside  world  by  making 
two  presents.  To  the  Czar  of  Russia  he  gave  a 
book  of  photographs  of  the  vessels  in  his  navy, 
and  in  contrast  to  this  grimly  humorous  recogni- 
tion of  Russia's  ambitions  he  presented  to  our 
government  an  emblem  in  gold  and  diamonds, 
commemorating  in  its  design  and  inscription  the 
discovering  of  this  country,  worth,  intrinsically, 
many  thousands  of  dollars.  He  was,  I  believe, 


CONSTANTINOPLE  223 

the  only  sovereign  who  showed  a  personal  inter- 
est in  our  national  celebration,  and  his  gift  was 
properly  one  of  the  government's  most  conspic- 
uous exhibits  at  the  Columbian  Fair. 

The  Mosque  of  St.  Sophia  is  one  of  the  first 
things  you  are  taken  to  see  in  Constantinople. 
It  is  to  the  Mussulman  what  St.  Peter's  is  to  the 
good  Catholic,  although  Justinian  built  it,  and 
the  cross  still  shows  in  many  parts  of  the  great 
building.  Three  times  during  the  year  this 
mosque  is  illuminated  within  and  without,  and 
every  good  Mussulman  attends  there  to  worship. 

There  is  something  very  fine  about  the  religion 
of  Mohammed — you  do  not  have  to  know  much 
about  it  to  appreciate  the  faith  of  its  followers, 
whether  you  know  what  it  is  they  believe  or  not. 
In  their  outward  observance,  at  least,  of  the  rules 
laid  down  for  them  in  the  Koran,  they  show  a  sin- 
cerity which  teaches  a  great  lesson.  You  can  see 
them  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  in  any  place  go- 
ing through  their  devotions.  A  soldier  will  kneel 
down  in  a  band  stand,  where  a  moment  before  he 
has  been  playing  for  the  regiment,  and  say  his 
prayers  before  two  thousand  spectators',  and  I 
have  had  some  difficulty  in  getting  my  trunks  on 
the  Orient  Express,  because  the  porters  were  at 
another  end  of  a  crowded,  noisy  platform  bowing 
towards  the  East.  Once  a  year  they  fast  for  a 
month,  the  season  of  Ramazan,  and  as  I  was  in 
Eastern  countries  during  that  month  I  know  that 
they  fast  rigidly.  Ramazan  begins  in  Egypt 
when  the  new  moon  appears  in  a  certain  well  near 


224          THE    RULERS    OF   THE    MEDITERRANEAN 

Cairo.  Two  men  watch  this  well,  and  when  they 
see  the  reflection  of  the  new  moon  on  its  surface 
they  run  into  Cairo  with  the  news,  and  Ramazan 
begins.  There  is  nothing  which  so  well  illustrates 
the  unchangeableness  of  the  East  and  its  customs 
as  the  sight  of  these  men  running  through  the 
streets  of  Cairo,  with  its  dog-carts  and  electric 
lights,  its  calendars  and  almanacs,  to  -tell  that  the 
moon  has  again  reached  that  point  that  it  had 
reached  for  many  hundreds  of  years  before,  when 
all  the  faithful  must  fast  and  pray. 

On  one  of  the  last  days  of  Ramazan  I  went  to 
the  door  of  St.  Sophia,  and  was  led  up  a  winding 
staircase  in  one  of  its  minarets — a  minaret-tower 
so  broad  and  high  that  the  staircase  within  it  has 
no  steps,  but  is  paved  smoothly  like  a  street.  It 
seemed  as  though  we  had  been  climbing  nearly 
ten  minutes  before  we  stepped  out  into  a  great 
gallery,  and  looked  down  upon  thousands  of  tur- 
baned  figures  bowing  and  kneeling  and  rising 
again  in  long  rows  like  infantry  in  close  order. 
Between  these  worshippers  and  ourselves  were 
fifty  circles  of  floating  tapers  swinging  from  chains, 
and  hanging  like  a  smoky  curtain  of  fire  between 
us  and  the  figures  below.  The  voice  of  the  priest 
rose  in  a  high,  uncanny  cry,  and  the  sound  of  the 
thousands  of  men  falling  forward  on  their  faces 
and  arms  was  like  the  rumble  of  the  waves 
breaking  on  the  shore.  Outside,  the  tops  of  min- 
arets were  circled  with  lights  and  lamps  strung 
on  long  ropes,  with  the  ends  flying  free,  and 
swinging  to  and  fro  in  the  night  wind  like  neck- 


CONSTANTINOPLE  22  ^ 

laces  of  stars.  This  was  the  most  beautiful  of  all 
the  sights  of  Constantinople  ;  and  as  a  matter  of 
opinion,  and  not  of  fact,  I  think  the  best  part  of 
Constantinople  is  that  part  of  it  that  is  in  the  air. 


Before  ending  this  last  chapter,  I  should  like 
to  make  two  suggestions  to  the  reader  who  has 
not  yet  visited  the  Mediterranean  and  who  thinks 
of  doing  so.  Let  him  not  be  deterred,  in  the  first 
place,  by  any  idea  of  the  difficulties  of  the  jour- 
ney, for  he  can  go  from  Gibraltar  along  the  entire 
northern  coast  of  Africa  and  into  Greece  and 
Italy  with  as  little  trouble  and  with  as  much  com- 
fort as  it  is  possible  for  him  to  make  the  journey 
from  New  York  to  Chicago.  And  in  the  second 
place,  should  he  go  in  the  winter  or  spring,  let 
him  not  be  misled  by  "  Italian  skies,"  or  "the 
blue  Mediterranean,"  or  "  the  dancing  waters  of 
the  Bosporus,"  into  imagining  that  he  is  going 
to  be  any  warmer  on  the  northern  coast  of  Africa 
than  he  is  in  New  York.  I  wore  exactly  the  same 
clothes  in  Italy  that  I  wore  the  day  I  left  the 
North  River  blocked  with  ice,  and  I  watched  a 
snow-storm  falling  on  u  the  dancing  waters  of  the 
Bosporus.  There  are  some  warm  days,  of  course, 
but  it  is  well  to  follow  that  good  old-fashioned  rule 
in  any  part  of  the  world,  that  it  is  cold  in  winter 
and  warm  in  summer,  and  people  who  spend  their 
lives  in  trying  to  dodge  this  fact  might  as  well 
try  running  away  from  death  and  the  postal  sys- 


228  THE    RULERS   OF   THE   MEDITERRANEAN 

tern.  To  any  one  who  has  but  a  little  time  and 
a  little  money  to  spend  on  a  holiday,  I  would 
suggest  going  to  Gibraltar,  and  from  there  to 
Spain  and  Morocco.  This  is  the  only  place,  per- 
haps, in  the  world  where  three  so  widely  different 
people  and  three  such  picturesque  people  as  the 
Moor,  the  British  soldier,  and  the  Spaniard  can 
be  found  within  two  hours  of  one  another. 

Morocco,  from  political  causes,  is  less  civilized 
than  any  other  part  of  the  northern  part  of  Africa; 
and  it  can  be  seen,  and  with  it  the  southern  cities 
of  Spain  and  the  Rock  of  Gibraltar,  in  five  or  six 
weeks,  and  at  a  cost  of  a  very  few  hundred  dol- 
lars. This  was  to  me  the  most  interesting  part 
of  the  Mediterranean,  chiefly,  of  course — for  it 
possesses  few  of  the  beauties  or  monuments  or 
historical  values  of  the  other  shores  of  that  sea — 
because  it  was  unknown  to  tourists  and  guide- 
books. A  visit  to  the  rest  of  the  Mediterranean 
is  merely  verifying  for  yourself  what  you  have 
already  learned  from  others. 


THE  END 


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